Connecticut prisons are dealing with drug overdoses. What is the state doing to slow it?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Emilia Otte to discuss her article, “Drug overdoses in CT prisons raising alarms,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: Hello, Emilia, what prompted you to investigate the problem of drug overdoses in Connecticut's prisons?
EO: I've been reporting a lot on the criminal justice system, and it's a problem that kept coming up in conversations with corrections officers, with people who are incarcerated, the issue just kept coming up in conversations about other things. And so I started to look into the problem of overdoses from a multitude of different types of drugs, opioids, methadone, and now this new drug called K2 or KD or KT, or 1000 other names that are used for it.
WSHU: What did you find was responsible for the uptick in drug overdoses?
EO: So a lot of it is coming from this new drug. I don't know how new it is, but this drug is called, as I mentioned, K2, and it's basically the mixture of either insecticides or rodenticides, some toxic chemical with cannabinoids, cannabis-like substances. And the problem with it is that it's very easy to get inside a prison because it can be sprayed on paper, so it's almost impossible to detect and stop. This is not just a Connecticut problem, by the way, this is going on throughout the country. Different states have been dealing with it in different ways, but this issue of K2 has been driving up the overdoses significantly.
WSHU: Now you say it can be sprayed onto paper and just licked off? And that's how you get the high?
EO: Well, not licked off, you would smoke it. So you can, you can use a battery essentially, and like some components of a pen cartridge, or at least that's how I've heard it's been done. And you can, you smoke it essentially.
WSHU: So that's why it's been difficult for the authorities to stop this. It's not that easy to catch, right?
EO: Yes, exactly.
WSHU: Okay. So what are the prison authorities doing in Connecticut? How are they tackling this problem?
EO: From what the Department of Corrections told me, there have been discussions about getting scanners, which could scan mail that comes in to see if there are chemicals or other substances on it. They don't have those scanners yet, from what I understand, but that is the discussion. There have been other things tried in other states. I think in Illinois, they tried to pass a law that would ban paper mail from coming in. That didn't work. There were discussions about, you know, photocopying every piece of mail. I think another state, New Jersey, I believe, has bought these types of scanners, and they say that it's decreased the amount of drugs coming in significantly.
WSHU: Now this problem is costing the state money because of the much higher number of calls, emergency calls at the correctional facilities, which is costing the local ambulances and fire departments money, and also some of the prisoners, their families have sued the state. So could you just talk a little bit more about that?
EO: I mean, it is expensive. And what I heard, and one of the things that got me interested in K2 specifically, was actually a cost to some of the towns, the town of Sommers, and this was widely reported, bringing forward concerns about the amount of diversion of their ambulances to Osborne Correctional Institute, which is within their area. And so, yes, it is expensive, it is costly, and I think that's why the state is looking into these scanner machines. With regard to the lawsuits, those are not about K2; those are about opiates or methadone. There have been no deaths in Connecticut that I'm aware of through K2.
WSHU: That's because methadone and the other prescribed drugs are also leading to overdoses and deaths. Correct?
EO: Yes.
WSHU: And that's what the lawsuits are about. Could you talk about the prescription of opioids in prisons?
EO: Yeah. So it's done through something called MAT, medication-assisted treatment. And this has been around in Connecticut for a while. It exists in most of the state's facilities, and it's a program that is highly recommended by physicians. They say that this is, you know, experts say that this is the best way to address opiate addiction. The challenge has been that in two instances that I'm aware of, in particular, that I wrote about with Tyler Cole and with Ronald Johnson, there was a problem with the Methadone prescriptions. Possibly the allegation, at least in Mr. Cole's case, was that too much methadone had been prescribed. I'm not a doctor. I can't comment on whether or not that's correct. I will say that their cases are not the only ones. There were some cases going back to 2021 and 22 where there were concerns. I'm aware of at least one other case where there were concerns about methadone prescription, and it was, I think, in 2022, so, yeah, it's the question of, you know, is this being addressed correctly through these programs, and what's going on with the prescribing.
WSHU: I also thought it was interesting that you brought in the human toll through your discussions with Tracy and Jason Ciccone, Tyler Cole's parents. Could you tell us about how they're taking it?
EO: I'm very grateful to them for speaking with me. I think that it has been extraordinarily hard on them. You know, you get a phone call that your child has died out of nowhere. And you know, Ronald Coleman, who was Ronald Johnson's father, said to me, you know, when, when I heard that he was incarcerated, I thought, Oh, well, at least he'll be safe there, because he had been struggling, you know, outside for a while. And then you find out that he died, and it's just, the shock. I can't even imagine the shock and the pain of that.
WSHU: Now, is there any silver lining in this? Is there anything that's happening that might bring some change to the situation?
EO: So the DOC has talked about scanners for a while, not just for the K2 situation, but also body scanners to detect any kind of drugs or contraband coming into the facilities. If those go into place, perhaps they will improve the situation. You know, we'll see. There's always a hope that people will read the story, and there will be some discussions about, you know, why this is happening, and whether there is a way to mitigate this a little bit better.
