Stronger increase in synthetic drugs in prisons

Synthetic drugs that fall under so-called new psychoactive substances (NPS) are repeatedly discovered in prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were 109 discoveries in the first half of the year. More than in the whole of 2023 (106 discoveries). Now a drug scanner is to be used against NPS for the first time.

“New psychoactive substances are a problem for society as a whole, which also has an impact on the prison system,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice: “Due to the diverse forms in which NPS appear, for example in paper form, finding the substances is a major challenge and is associated with considerable difficulties.”

Unlike traditional drugs such as cocaine or cannabis, NPS are invisible and odorless. They can be dripped onto paper and smuggled into prison in notepads, for example. The pieces of paper are smoked. “In everyday life, indications of consumption often only arise from a physical reaction of the consumer – for example, seizures,” said the ministry spokesman.

Now, for the first time, a drug scanner is to be used in the Rheinbach prison to find designer drugs on objects. Prison staff take swab samples using a test strip and receive a result from the detector after a few seconds. The device is linked to a database run by the Rhineland-Palatinate judiciary, which lists numerous different NPS.

Synthetic drugs are already in second place in terms of the total number of drugs found in prisons. Only cannabis was found more often (323 times in the first half of the year). According to the ministry, opioids were discovered 63 times, amphetamine 43 times, psychotropic drugs 31 times, and cocaine 26 times.