Authorities in Chicago are investigating a series of inmate deaths linked to paper, raising concerns about a lethal substance and prompting urgent action to prevent further fatalities. The 'paper epidemic' has already claimed three lives in the Cook County Correctional Facility.
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I want to receive content once a day in my inboxWe value your inbox – it's 100% free, and you can unsubscribe anytime with one click. Thank you! You've successfully subscribed to newsletters!We value your inbox – it's free and you can unsubscribe anytime with one click., and paper in general, after a string of eerie fatalities that began in 2023.in his cell in January 2023. Guards at the Cook County Correctional Facility didn’t find any evidence of foul play or an accident. Guards at the Cook County Correctional Facility were baffled when they found a 57-year-old inmate lifeless in his cell. The “paper epidemic” has already caused two prison fatalities in 2026, according to the Cook County Sheriff's Office. Chicago is on high alert after a disturbing wave of inmate fatalities was traced back to something as ordinary as paper“I said, ‘We need to test this and find out what’s going on with it,’” said Cook County Sheriff’s Office chief of staff Brad Curry, as perLess than two weeks after Diskin’s case, a 23-year-old prisoner was found lifeless, followed by the passing of a 35-year-old inmate.After analyzing the paper in a Pennsylvania lab, investigators found that the strips were soaked in a synthetic cannabinoid known as Pinaca, which turned lethal when Diskin smoked the paper. “It was a race against time … we had a new dr*g that is very, very toxic and very, very d*adly, that Narcan apparently didn’t work on,” Curry explained.smuggled into the jail, like soaked paper” and stated, “Do not take dr*gs in the jail if you want to live.” What followed was a large-scale operation to try to remove all of the cannabinoid-soaked paper inside the 6,000-inmate facility.that the strips of paper were sometimes so tiny that guards were unable to find them. Not even trained police K-9s were able to sniff out the potentially lethal substance. As efforts to find the chemically infused paper increased, inmates developed more advanced methods to get their hands on the product.Prisoners began forging legal documents, infusing them with the substance and making them look like they came from a courthouse. They also applied the product to pages of thick books that arrived at the prison packaged as if they’d been sent from Amazon or a local bookstore.Pinaca could reportedly be sold for up to $10,000. The lucrative business eventually drew in prison staffers, who were jailed for smuggling the paper to inmates.The paper also came from outsiders. Surveillance footage from 2024 caught a visitor tossing a sullied paper slip to an inmate.This led to a reduction in substance-related fatalities in the prison in 2024. However, concerns grew again when one case was reported in 2025 and two already in 2026, with the incidents suspected to be connected to“I think the type of dr*g that they’re using now, the potency, will probably be a contributing factor to why we see a rise this year than what we’ve seen the last two years,” he said.RDNE Stock project “If you’re a police officer and you pull somebody over … and there’s a stack of paper in an open Office Depot wrapper, you have no idea that that’s $1 million worth of dr*gs right there, and your dogs are not going to hit on it. Nobody’s going to know that … until we educate all our police officers. “You’d have a lot of new dealers that are millionaires, because nobody would catch on to it probably for a long time.”Curry warned that the synthetic cannabinoid paper could fuel the “biggest war on dr*gs you’ve ever seen in your life,” surpassing even the fentanyl crisis. According to the DEA, more than 107,000 people lost their lives to a substance OD in 2023, with nearly 70% of cases attributed to opi*ids such as fentanyl. Drug-laced paper smuggled through books and legal mail has been tied to multiple inmate deaths at a Chicago jail, officials report. A synthetic cannabinoid, Pinaca, was found on paper fragments.A paper published in the National Library of Medicine notes that, compared with cannabis, severe and fatal pois*ning appears to be more common under the influence of synthetic cannabinoids, which first appeared as an alternative to cannabis on the black market around the year 2000.By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to ourWith a degree in social science and a love for culture, I approach entertainment journalism at Bored Panda with a research-driven mindset. I write about celebrity news, Hollywood highlights, and viral stories that spark curiosity worldwide. My work has reached millions of readers and is recognized for balancing accuracy with an engaging voice. I believe that pop culture isn’t just entertainment, it reflects the social conversations shaping our time.With a degree in social science and a love for culture, I approach entertainment journalism at Bored Panda with a research-driven mindset. I write about celebrity news, Hollywood highlights, and viral stories that spark curiosity worldwide. My work has reached millions of readers and is recognized for balancing accuracy with an engaging voice. I believe that pop culture isn’t just entertainment, it reflects the social conversations shaping our time.Thank you! You've successfully subscribed to newsletters! By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. 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