Three deaths as zombie drug is ‘rife’ in prisons
... and Spice epidemic is even making staff ill
SCOTLAND’s prisons are in the grip of a deadly epidemic of ‘zombie’ drugs.
Three inmates have died after taking forms of psychoactive drug Spice while behind bars.
A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) last week heard that a prisoner died after smoking the substance at the maximum security HMP Shotts in Lanarkshire.
Now prison officers have warned the problem is ‘the worst it’s ever been’, with guards put at risk by the violent and unpredictable behaviour of a growing number of drug-crazed inmates.
They are demanding urgent action to try to stop inmates getting hold of the synthetic cannabis, which leaves the user in a zombielike stupor and unable to move.
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has admitted there are hundreds of incidents a year involving Spice.
Yesterday, Prison Officers Association Scotland chairman Phil Fairlie said: ‘The drug is a big problem for prison staff. The impact on individual prisoners is erratic and unpredictable. We need to invest in technology to detect it – it’s absolutely necessary.’
He added that ‘several members of staff’ had felt the effects of working with prisoners smoking the drug and suffered symptoms including light-headedness, dizziness and short-term memory loss.
Spice is a cheap, highly toxic, synthetic cannabinoid made from chemical compounds which mimic the effect of high-strength cannabis. Often, it is soaked into paper and dried, making it easy to smuggle into the prison system.
When smoked, varieties of the drug induce wildly different effects including extreme violence, aggression and black-outs.
FAIs have probed the deaths of three prisoners who died within an 18-month period after smoking the drug. Last week, Hamilton Sheriff Court heard about the death of Gary Shearon, 46, a prisoner in HMP Shotts serving five-and-a-half years for assault and robbery.
In May 2017, he was seen to be under the influence of a psychoactive substance. After admitting he had taken Spice, he was moved to an observation cell.
An hour later he was unresponsive and was admitted to Wishaw General Hospital, but did not respond to treatment. A postmortem examination confirmed he had died of brain damage, caused by cardiac arrest due to suspected drug intoxication.
Murderer Thomas Shields, 30, died in October 2017 in Castle Huntly, near Dundee, and fellow inmate Kevin Sloan, 31, died in February 2016, both from taking versions of the drug. FAIs into their deaths were heard at Perth Sheriff Court two weeks ago.
Shields was found dead only months before completing his 14year sentence. It was confirmed the drug 5F-mdmb-Pinaca had killed him. Sloan died as a result of taking a combination of heroin and AKB48-N15 (hydroxypentyl), a similar synthetic cannabinoid.
The FAIs will hear more evidence this month.
An SPS spokesman said: ‘Part of the problem is people are not taking the same thing – there isn’t one single type of synthetic cannabinoid. They are different from each other, they are difficult to detect.
‘It’s also the way in which the compounds react with individual body chemistry, it doesn’t cause the same reaction in everybody and that’s part of the problem.’
He added that there are ‘hundreds of incidents’ in prisons believed to be linked to the drug.
A former Scottish prison nurse said: ‘We had one prisoner who ran about naked and thought he was Spider-Man, jumping off his bed.
‘But we had another who was so violent it took six officers to restrain him. He’d have killed someone if he hadn’t been held down.’