By Rose White
mlive.com
LANSING, Mich. — Wisps of smoke curled from the cell.
A Michigan inmate had been caught smoking a strip of rolled up paper. A corrections officer confiscated it and brought it back to an office where the smoldering paper, with nothing inside it, continued to burn.
It smelled, and smoke filled the room – causing two officers to get sick.
One struggled to breathe, became dizzy and vomited. Another felt nauseous.
Both went to the emergency room.
Researchers called it a case of “wasping,” an emerging form of prison drug use in which inmates smoke paper that has been doused with wasp spray.
It’s a facet of a broader problem.
Drug-soaked paper has become one of the hardest contraband threats to control inside Michigan prisons, where ordinary sheets can be sprayed with synthetic drugs, smuggled behind bars and smoked by inmates.
“It’s certainly an underreported phenomenon,” said Alex Krotulski , director of the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education .
Earlier this year, the Michigan Department of Corrections reported that tighter mail policies had cut down on contraband, but “adulterated paper remains a primary form” of drugs getting into prisons.
The danger has persisted as overdoses surge: The department reported 396 total drug overdoses last year, up from 227 the year before and 41 a decade ago — an 865% increase.
So, what can officials do to stop it?
The Michigan Department of Corrections has tried to crack down on any scrap of paper from getting behind bars. These efforts helped cut down on contraband, but not completely. And now, they’re still working to stem the flow of drugs into the state’s 26 prisons.
Wasping
In September 2025 , corrections officers found an inmate walking around a state prison confused. His heart was racing at 170 beats per minute and his pupils dilated. He admitted to smoking paper laced with synthetic drugs, meth and wasp spray.
At the emergency room, he remained confused while his eyes rapidly darted around.
Doctors contacted the poison center when drug testing turned out negative.
He was later discharged.
This case was recently documented by Michigan State University occupational health researchers who tracked cases of wasping in state prisons over the past three years.
They found that 20 prisoners, nine corrections officers and one prison staff member got sick from exposure to wasping fumes from 2023 to 2026.
At least one inmate has died.
In March 2025, an inmate was found not breathing in his cell. He had smoked fentanyl and a pyrethroid insecticide, a toxic wasp spray ingredient that gives users a meth-like high, but “it is unknown who identified this,” the case report said.
He never woke up and died after six days in the hospital.
The MSU researchers assembled the case data from a patchwork of sources, hospital records, poison control calls, workers compensation claims and ambulance calls, to understand the scope of the issue in Michigan .
Twelve of the cases were identified this year.
“The number is increasing,” said Ken Rosenman said. “But once we’re aware of something we get better at recognizing it.”
It’s the only source of data on wasping in Michigan prisons, said Rosenman, and it does not provide specifics about where and when the cases occurred.
The findings are also limited because it only tallies cases reported by hospitals to the state’s pesticide surveillance system and no testing was done to confirm if pesticides were involved.
The bigger problem
Wasping is only part of the paper problem.
It’s likely that most cases deemed “wasping” involve synthetic cannabinoids, said Krotulski, because the word has become an overarching term for drug-soaked paper being smoked in prisons.
“Usually it is synthetic cannabinoids,” he said. “It’s the thing that’s going to get (inmates) high. It’s unfortunately also the thing that is quite toxic, has pretty bad side effects and can result in death.”
Known as K2, the lab-made drugs mimic marijuana with more dangerous outcomes, like psychotic episodes, hallucinations and bursts of violent behavior. It’s highly addictive, and usually cheaper than other drugs.
Krotulski, who has been researching drug-soaked paper in prisons and jails for the past decade, says use of K2 is not new, but there has been a resurgence in the past two years.
The Center for Forensic Science Research and Education identified synthetic cannabinoids in 225 inmate overdoses across the country in 2024, according to a public health alert. That jumped to 1,039 last year.
“It was a massive increase,” Krotulski said. “And we continue to see large numbers of synthetic cannabinoid positivity.”
That is also likely an undercount because not every prison death investigation will include testing for drugs and K2 is not part of a standard toxicology test.
In Michigan, at least four prisoners died from a K2 overdose this year, the latest prisoner mortality report shows from February through August. Another 42 deaths are pending a medical examiner review. There were zero K2 deaths on the previous report.
Meanwhile, drug overdoses have also spiked while the prison population has dropped.
The Michigan Department of Corrections reported 396 total drug overdoses last year, according to critical incident reports, a 74% jump from the year prior. They’re up nearly tenfold since 2016. And there were 12 overdose deaths reported in 2025.
Last year, a Michigan inmate wrote about the sudden flood of K2 into his prison in an article published by the Prison Journalism Project .
He described smoke-filled bathrooms smelling like burnt bug spray, an inmate clawing at his face and a constant stream of ambulances responding to medical emergencies.
“I saw paramedics run into C Unit with an empty stretcher and come out with a middle-aged man. He seized as he was wheeled to the ambulance. He had just smoked K2,” he wrote.
Smuggling the drugs behind bars can be lucrative, according to two inmates who separately wrote about K2.
A quarter inch square, or a dot, is enough to get high that can be sold for $1 to $3, they wrote. An entire sheet of printer paper, sprayed with drugs and dried, can go for up to $1,000.
Smoke sickens four workers
Inmates aren’t the only ones getting sick, workers are at risk too.
In August 2025 , four corrections officers got sick from smoke that filled an inmate’s cell at Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian .
One officer tried to air the cell out before searching for contraband, according to a Michigan Department of Corrections report obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, but he still inhaled the fumes.
Another officer was struggling to breathe. Both went to the emergency room.
No contraband was found.
The next day, two other officers started to clean out the empty cell. They also got sick.
A Michigan State Police narcotics team responded to the prison to investigate what sickened the four officers. Wearing Hazmat suits and respirators, they collected the inmate’s belongings from the cell and quarantined the bags.
A follow up investigation from the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it was unclear what the officers were exposed to, but it could be from inmates making “drugs from materials such as bug spray.”
“Inmates have taken towels to soak up Raid from pest control to use to get high,” a case file said.
The prison faced a $6,000 fine for not providing proper personal protective equipment.
The Michigan Department of Corrections appealed the citation saying the incident “falls significantly outside the norm” of what generally happens during a cell search and there was “no reason to suspect” contraband would be found the next day.
“Especially in light of the fact that on Aug. 27 , the cell was unoccupied, nothing was burning and no drugs or contraband were found the day before,” an appeal said.
Two months later, smoke from an inmate’s cell at Gus Harrison was so thick it set off the fire alarm.
Crackdown on paper
For officials, they’ve tried to limit paper getting behind bars, but it’s proving to be a game of whack-a-mole.
At first, the drugs were smuggled through the mail – letters, greeting cards or drawings laced with chemicals.
Because of that, the Michigan corrections agency stopped giving inmates their mail six years ago, providing photocopies instead. But as drugs kept getting in, the policy was tightened this year to include all confidential and legal mail. The originals get shredded.
The mail policy has helped cut down on contraband, the Michigan Department of Corrections reported to lawmakers earlier this year, but drug-soaked paper continues to be a challenge because “nearly any piece of paper within a facility could include contraband.”
“The Michigan Department of Corrections continues to take significant strides to reduce drug contraband, which has become increasingly difficult in recent years due to the increase of synthetic drugs that may be sprayed or soaked on paper and easily concealed,” said agency spokesperson Jenni Riehle in a statement.
Thirty-six states now photocopy prison mail to stop the flow of contraband.
It’s a practice that prison advocates criticize for depriving inmates of a physical connection with loved ones because photocopies can be low quality, sometimes blurry and scanned in black and white.
But, the drugs are still getting behind bars.
“It’s not completely effective in outright getting rid of drugs coming into prisons,” Krotulski said. “It just shifts the mode in which they’re coming in.”
Last year, a former corrections officer was accused of trying to smuggle drugs into an Upper Peninsula prison.
Investigators said Andre Taylor , an officer with the Michigan Department of Corrections , and Edward King were caught with 15 sheets of suspected K2 paper, alongside other drugs.
Earlier this year, investigators uncovered another drug smuggling plot at the Baraga Correctional Facility.
When a woman showed up for a prisoner visit in January, she allegedly tucked a package under a sink in the bathroom. Investigators replaced the taped-up roll with a decoy. The next day, an inmate on his work shift was caught collecting the package.
Inside were blank sheets of paper laced with K2 and strips of suboxone paper.
“This is a phenomenon that’s always changing. It’s not only the drugs could change but the manner in which substances get into prisons can change,” Krotulski said. “This isn’t something that’s going to be easily fixed overnight.”
Despite the challenge, the Michigan Department of Corrections is continuing with its efforts under the Safe Prisons Initiative.
Inmates are now banned from ordering hardcover books, the pages of which have been found to be soaked with drugs. And after used book donations were prohibited, each prison library was restocked with new books.
New technologies, including body and package scanners, have aimed to deter smuggling.
Officers intercepted more than 100 items of contraband this year.
The state also boosted the budget for contraband prevention efforts from $2.75 million last year to $3.75 million in this year’s bill for technology, stricter policies, staff intervention, intelligence and “a commitment to addressing the root causes of contraband,” according to a state House fiscal analysis.
It will also support enhancing screening of everyone, including staff, who enter prisons.
“As the nature of contraband continues to evolve, the department continues to implement effective strategies to deter and halt such illegal activities,” said correctional facility administration deputy director, Jeremy Bush , in a statement last year.
Photocopying inmate mail hasn’t stopped drug-soaked paper from getting in. What has actually worked at your facility, and what hasn’t?
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