What'll They Think of Next?

Mother’s Day came and went in May as usual, and while reading the news I couldn’t help but think of one of my mother’s favorite bewildered phrases: “What’ll they think of next?”

It’s bad enough that there is drug addiction, but now a drug that was devised for the purpose of helping drug addicts get off of drugs has itself become a choice drug for addicts. We are talking about Suboxone. Addicts buy it on the street when they cannot get “the good stuff,” in order to stave off the sickness that comes with withdrawal. But some have realized that it can cause a high as well.

The current problem here in Windham, Maine, as reported in a May 27, 2011 article, is that Suboxone is being crushed and manipulated into other forms in order to sneak it into the prisons for the inmates. Some have turned it into a paste and over in New Jersey it was spread all over coloring book pages that were supposedly sent by an inmate’s daughter. A guard confiscated them after being tipped off by another inmate. Mike Barrett, a corrections officer here in Windham, had to open envelopes to check whether items were actually Father’s Day cards or not. Some people have spread Suboxone under stamps to be licked off later. It’s rather amazing what a small amount of this powerful drug can do.

It has now been discovered that the drug also comes in thin strips that can be dissolved under the tongue, much like the Listerine strips that have been popular in the past few years. The Cumberland County jail found two letters with the strips in it and then determined that all incoming envelopes had to be white so that the orange strips could be seen through the envelopes when held up to the light. And the prison staff now have to tear off all stamps before delivering the mail, as well.

"It's become a crisis in here, to be honest with you," said Maj. Francine Breton, administrator of the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine. "It's the drug of choice right now."

The Maine Correctional Center removes all mail from envelopes before delivering it and then burns the envelopes. They do not deliver any mail that contains crayon scribblings, stickers, or glitter glue.