Why Chicago Inmates Are Dying Over Scraps of Paper

Chicago correctional system staff have probably seen every kind of contraband, but what is currently flooding the cells of the city’s most infamous jail is something far more elusive than anything they faced in the 1990s. While the crack epidemic was loud and visible, this new threat arrives in the mail.

When the guards at Cook County Correctional Facility found Thomas Diskin slumped near his cell’s toilet, there were no signs of a struggle. No bruises, no weapons and no clear medical crisis explained why Diskin, 57, suddenly passed away in January 2023.

A trail of tiny, singed scraps of paper scattered across the floor like confetti was the only clue left behind—something authorities initially overlooked—until now.

For months, a string of unexplained inmate deaths in the Windy City jail left investigators perplexed, searching for foul play that just didn’t exist. However, what looked like a mundane piece of mail or a torn page from a book inside the walls of the Cook County Department of Corrections on California Avenue turned out to be a signed death warrant.

“I said, ‘We need to test this and find out what’s going on with it,’” Cook County Sheriff’s Office chief of staff Brad Curry said, referring to the paper shreds found related to Diskin’s death, the New York Post reported. A Virginia lab did just that, and confirmed that the paper strips were soaked in a synthetic cannabinoid called Pinaca, which proved lethal when Diskin smoked the paper.

Unlike the natural high of marijuana, the lab-cooked chemical violently hijacks the central nervous system, hitting the brain with a force up to 100 times more potent than THC. Pinaca, a volatile, unpredictable substance that can trigger immediate cardiac arrest, can be a deadly poison that shuts the body down in a matter of seconds.

Before authorities could stop the spread of Pinaca, other inmates were dropping dead.

Less than two weeks after Diskin died, a 23-year-old was found dead and a 35-year-old inmate died shortly after. By the end of 2023, a total of six prisoners had fatally overdosed after reportedly smoking the tiny strips of paper soaked in synthetic drugs.

“Do not take drugs in the jail if you want to live,” jailhouse signs would read, warning the near 6,000 inmates about “drugs smuggled into the jail, like soaked paper.” Drug-trained police K-9s were able to sniff out the synthetic drug, however, smugglers developed more sophisticated workarounds.

Smugglers doused legal documents that appeared to be sent direct from the courthouse in drugs, and even placed the drugs in packaged books ordered from Amazon or a local bookstore.

Prison deaths from smoking drug-soaked paper fell to just one in the last two years, but there’s already been two deaths reported in 2026. As authorities attempt to contain the drug from entering inside the jailhouse, others are shifting their focus outside of cellblocks, and into the schools.

“How do you keep it out of schools, because it’s on pieces of paper? It’s terrifying. It would be worse than the fentanyl in the street,” Curry said.

He added: “So the ramifications, if this does go to the street, are huge. This would be the biggest war on drugs you’ve ever seen in your life… you’d have a lot of new drug dealers that are millionaires, because nobody would catch on to it probably for a long time.”