A strand of synthetic cannabinoid, *known as K2 by inmates, has caused more overdoses than any other drug in Ohio prisons throughout the last year.
The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering criminal justice in the U.S., partnered with the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository to investigate the smuggling of K2 inside Ohio correctional institutions.
“Nearly half of all drugs found in Ohio prisons are suspected to be K2 paper or other synthetic drugs, state records show,” The Marshall Project reported.
According to the investigation, prisoners smoke drug-soaked paper that is sold in confetti-sized hits.
NMS Labs Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President Barry Logan said inmates typically receive the drugs from smugglers through legal documents, children’s artwork and clothing, to avoid suspicion.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction issued a pilot process as a security measure in December 2024, now incorporated by 11 prisons in Ohio. Mail or any third-party delivery services, like DoorDash, received by prisoners would be opened, copied and shredded by prison employees in the presence of the addressed inmate.
The Marshall Project stated the effort to identify K2 faces challenges due to costs, inadequate testing and potential exposure.
“There’s no single drug test that will detect everything, and the synthetic cannabinoids in particular, are notorious for not showing up in routine drug tests,” Logan said. “You’d have to order a second test, so basically double the cost of your drug testing program.”
Logan is also the chief scientist at The Center for Forensic Science Research and Education. A program, NPS Discovery, under CFSRE is “an open-access drug early warning system (EWS) operating in the United States.”
CFSRE released a report last month called the “Synthetic Cannabinoid Detections Surge Among Fatal Overdoses of Inmates in Jails & Correctional Facilities,” to notify the health professionals.
The report highlights the commonality of synthetic cannabinoids, also known as synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists, throughout the nation and their origins.
SCRA markets opened during the early 2000s, with China having generic control of the drug class. After the Chinese government enacted regulations regarding the structure of SCRA in 2021, innovations in drug manufacturing contributed to new markets and new drug identification testing.
“People were shipping bulk powders, typically in two-kilogram bags, but it’s pretty potent drugs, so that’s a lot of material,” Logan said. “I think most of the preparation of them smuggling into jails and prisons was done domestically.”
Trends of overdoses permeate throughout Alabama, Florida, California, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois and Texas. Each state has detected different analogs, synthetic versions of a drug, of cannabinoids.
NMS drug testing laboratories and toxicologists, overseen by Logan, reside in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas. The labs receive samples from law enforcement, correctional institutions and coroners around the country, including Athens.
Death investigator at Athens County Coroner’s Office Ben Ashcraft takes samples of blood, eye fluid or oral swabs if overdose is the suspected cause of death and sends them to NMS Labs.
In 2025, the coroner’s office confirmed 16 drug overdoses, while in 202, there were 25 and in 2022, there were 28. Ashcraft believes the increase during the early 2020s is due to the implementation of synthetic versions of fentanyl, which he attributes to being the reason for most overdoses in Ohio.
“Most of our drug overdoses are poly-substance intoxication, which means there is more than one drug in the system found that was at fatal levels,” Ashcraft said. “Most of these overdoses are considered accidental manner because they weren’t suicides.”
People often do not know what type of drug or how much of it they are taking in prisons, according to Ashcraft. A common occurrence is when drug abusers go into rehabilitation, then ingest the same amount as they had before, and their tolerance levels induce an overdose.
Ashcraft spoke with the death investigator for Ross County Coroner's office, who had reported a few inmate deaths in Ross Correctional Institution due to K2 overdose in the past couple of years.
“Sometimes when people have a sedation effect from a drug, they can collapse in a way that they can have positional asphyxia, and they can’t breathe well because of the position they’re in, and then they basically die because of that,” Ashcraft said.
In Athens, there is a temporary holding facility that only holds inmates for about eight hours; if need be, they are transferred to the regional jail, Athens Chief of Police Nick Magruder said.
“I haven’t seen synthetic drugs in a long time,” Magruder said. “We see some more synthetic drugs where it's in combination of, like, fentanyl, carfentanil, those kinds of drugs, and a really high, high tolerance kind of medication like they have, that people were using.”
