Ohio prison drug-smuggling case highlights spread of K2 paper

Drug-soaked paper is now the most commonly found drug in Ohio prisons, fueling violence and accounting for more deaths than any other substance. In Ohio’s largest prison drug conspiracy case, more than a dozen suspects were convicted in connection to a statewide prison drug smuggling operation centered on drug-soaked paper and money laundering.

According to state records, nearly half of all drugs found in Ohio prisons are suspected to be K2 paper or other synthetic drugs. The highly addictive drug is smuggled in by staff and visitors, tossed over fences and dropped in by drones. Wide-ranging and unpredictable side effects include vomiting, twitching, convulsing, aggression and psychosis.

Murphy was among at least 13 people incarcerated in Ohio who fatally overdosed on K2 in 2024, up from just three the year before, according to available autopsy and toxicology reports. Coroners say they are struggling to identify K2 and other chemicals that evade detection in standard toxicology tests, causing state prison officials to undercount fatal overdoses.

From 2020 to 2024, records show that rule violations for drug use and possession doubled from 10,308 to 20,799, despite only a 6% uptick in the state prison population. Prison officials attribute the spike to new drug detection methods.

According to the Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office, Norman Whiteside of Columbus and Justin Alexander of Zanesville were found guilty of their involvement in a statewide prison drug smuggling operation, the largest in Ohio’s history. Whiteside, 71, was found guilty of engaging in pattern of corrupt activity, drug trafficking, illegal conveyance of drugs into a prison, and money laundering. Alexander was convicted of trafficking in methamphetamine, trafficking in cocaine, conspiracy to manufacture drugs, trafficking and possession of Pinaca and Butinaca substances, multiple counts of illegal conveyance, and 40 counts of money laundering.

The charges against Whiteside revolved around an “attorney control number,” which is a safety protocol used by the prison system to provide inmates privacy in their legal mail, while also preventing legal mail from being used as a means for sending and receiving drug-soaked paper into the building. Records showed that Alexander paid Whiteside $8,000 in August 2022, and days later a package with an attorney control number was delivered to Alexander in prison. An additional payment of $3,000 was followed by a delivery of drug-soaked paper to Whiteside, who then sent the documents to the prison using the attorney control number.

Alexander, who was found to be the organization’s leader, ran the operation out of the Southern Ohio Regional Correctional Facility in Lucasville, in which profits were laundered through a financial hub in Zanesville. The investigation revealed the prison term for drug-soaked paper is “toon” and that it is sold in increments of the size of the prisoner’s face on their ID card. A single sheet of drug-soaked paper can produce 88 prisoner ID faces, with each sheet of paper netting Alexander more than $8,000.

It was concluded that Alexander profited in the hundreds of thousands of dollars by the operation and structured the organization so that his co-conspirators had “plausible deniability,” so that even if one person was arrested, the operation could survive. State officials said drug-soaked paper is the most troubling development within state prisons in 30 years because the common chemicals and synthetic compounds are hard to detect, and the paper is easy to smuggle and hide.