20 prison officers sent home sick from Spice drug fumes

‘He was crying like a baby’

CRIMINALS are smuggling so much ‘zombie drug’ Spice into jails that 20 officers at a single prison went home sick last week after inhaling the fumes.

The synthetic cannabis, which often leaves addicts unable to walk or speak, is rife in UK prisons and staff are increasingly becoming passive victims of the epidemic.

Spice can come in liquid form, and it is being sprayed on paper and sent to inmates in the form of letters – which the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) says is ‘very hard to stop’.

Prisoners either steam the letter with a kettle to get high from the vapour or shred it to smoke with tobacco, polluting the jail’s atmosphere.

Before last week’s sickness crisis at Holme House men’s prison in Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham, there had been 41 occasions this year where guards at the jail had been made ill by exposure to Spice, the POA said.

Last Thursday, 12 staff had to be taken off duty with alarming symptoms, which include headaches, dizziness, hallucinations, racing heartbeat and anxiety.

Eight were off the day before, according to the POA. Sixteen remain absent through sickness from inhaling drug fumes.

Officers are also concerned about unknown long-term effects of the relatively new psychoactive substance.

A 5.6kg (12.3lb) haul of Spice worth around £200,000 – the largest ever found in a British jail – was seized at the Category B Holme House.

The union’s acting vicechairman Terry Fullerton said Spice was ‘an epidemic in prisons across the country’.

The partner of one guard, who was not named, told the Northern Echo how he was struck down twice in a week.

On the first occasion, she said: ‘His eyes were bloodshot red, protruding from his eye sockets. He broke down crying like a baby as he sobbed into my arms.’