A drone probably not unlike the one carrying the drugs that fell into the Ohio prison. Photo via Flickr user Don McCullough
Read: How to Protect Yourself from Violence in PrisonAt 2:30 PM on July 29, a robot hovered above the Mansfield Correctional Facility in Ohio. From its bowels dropped a set of items bound to cause chaos once plopped into the center in a prison yard: five ounces of tobacco, 2.3 ounces of weed, and 0.2 ounces of heroin. As the Columbus Dispatch notes, if the smack was half-pure, that amount would contain about 140 doses.Given the combined value of all those drugs behind bars, it's pretty unlikely that the person controlling the drone was a mere prankster. In fact, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith told the Dispatch that this has happened before, in different prisons, and that drone awareness is becoming a priority among the agency's security administrators.For further proof that drones are becoming the future of smuggling, one crashed in a California supermarket parking lot in January as part of a failed crystal meth operation out of Mexico. Sylvia Longmire, a drug war analyst, told CNN at the time that cartels had previously used drones for surveillance, but the crash signaled new territory for them.As expected, madness reigned as a result of the recent attempt to drop a bunch of valuable, mind-altering substances into a mass of bored criminals. About 200 prisoners fought over the package, which was, at one point, tossed over a fence from the facility's north yard to it's south one, according to the Dispatch.Officers eventually subdued the inmates with pepper spray and put nine people in solitary confinement.Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.
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