East Hall of Arkansas Department of Corrections’ Cummins Unit has always been rowdy. But since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, it has felt like a war zone. From what I can see, assaults, robberies, thefts and extortion have increased significantly.
Arguably, the culprit is an easily smuggled substance that doesn’t show up in urine analysis: deuce.
Deuce goes by many names — K2 or Spice are common ones — and is a synthetic marijuana product. It contains substances made in labs that are similar to the chemicals found in cannabis plants. But it is a far cry from the natural herb and its organic high.
When I was first in East Hall for a disciplinary infraction in 2017, only a handful of guys in each barracks smoked it (but even then local media reported on deaths with a possible link to deuce, as well as hundreds of other “K2 incidents”). Now that I’m back in East Hall again, it seems like only a handful don’t.
Deuce has become a currency inside Cummins, with sometimes violent consequences. Anything can be sold for deuce. I know guys here who have sold everything they own, even their mattresses. If an individual possesses something that has deuce value, it will be taken or fought over. If someone is known to have a lot of money on their books, they are extorted. If personal property, like a radio, headphones, food or hygiene items, are left unattended, they will be stolen. Even a roll of toilet paper, worth a dot of deuce, is subject to theft.
I once saw someone stabbed for a sack of commissary items they could trade for deuce. On another occasion, I saw a man beaten with a “lock in a sock” for a few sticks’ worth of the drug.
Deuce is relatively simple to manufacture using ingredients sourced from any hardware store, plus a synthetic cannabinoid solution that is easy to obtain via the dark web. Users liken its short-lived but intense high to something similar to heroin and fentanyl. Many of my peers had only smoked marijuana before coming to prison. At some point they were offered to smoke what they were told was “sort of like weed.”
A deuce producer coats a regular sheet of paper with the clear substance; once dry, it is practically invisible. After the drug is smuggled into prison, a dealer cuts the paper and distributes them in various sizes. Small sections of “dots” — about a quarter-inch square — go for $1 to $3. “Slugs” are half-inch to one-inch squares that go for $5 to $10. An “ID” is about the size of a driver’s license and costs between $50 and $100. Sometimes the whole sheet is sold as-is. One 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of deuce paper can sell for upward of $1,000. There are many dealers in my prison, but the biggest market is in East Hall.
Walking around my prison in early 2024, you could see many signs of disrepair: damaged light fixtures; moldy ceilings; missing floor tiles; broken sinks, toilets and showers; leaky roofs that flooded the halls and cells when it rained; and cracked and decaying walls, scorched brown with burn trails from deuce wicks.
Wicks are made out of a length of tightly twisted toilet paper to form a thin rope. One end is lit and the flame blown out to allow a cherry to slowly burn. Deuce users use the wicks to light sticks — similar to marijuana joints but filled with cut-up slivers of deuce paper — rolled out of thin Bible paper. The wicks themselves are typically hung on the back walls of the open barracks. Black ash collects in a heap on the floor below them as nauseating smoke hangs in the air.
Over the last few years the wicks’ brown burn trails have started to overlap as they spread across the walls. The back wall of every barrack in East Hall now looks like actual flames have licked it.