Concord — A quick kiss between an inmate and his girlfriend in the prison visiting room is all it takes to slip a small amount of illegal drugs, concealed within a deflated balloon, from one mouth to the other.

Just like that, officials say, contraband enters the state prison for men in Concord. There, a half-inch strip of the narcotic Suboxone sells for $300.

Officials are constantly trying to clamp down on the presence of drugs in the state prisons, especially as New Hampshire fights an opioid epidemic that claimed more than 420 lives last year.

“We do our best to intercept it,” said Department of Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn. “But it’s obvious to us that some of it does get through.”

To help cut back on the contraband, the Legislature is considering a proposal to equip state prisons with full-body X-ray scanners that would screen staff, inmates and visitors.

The six machines together would cost an estimated $1.1 million and likely replace existing metal detectors in the hopes of catching drugs and other contraband hidden in people’s clothing or within their bodies.

Records provided by the Department of Corrections show the drug trade is active behind the walls of all three state prisons: the men’s facilities in Berlin and Concord, and the women’s prison in Goffstown.

Within the last year, prison officials wrote 18 citations to Concord inmates, 13 to Berlin inmates and six to Goffstown inmates for being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, records show.

In that same time, officials filed 255 citations in Concord, 94 in Berlin and six in Goffstown for inmates possessing, distributing, manufacturing or introducing illicit drugs or alcohol into the buildings.

More than 2,630 inmates are in the state prison system. Roughly 85 percent of inmates who come in have abused drugs or alcohol, and about 25 percent of those are addicted, the department estimates. The department doesn’t track how many drugs are seized inside the prisons each year.

“We don’t keep a tracking document,” said Jeff Lyons, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. “Items are seized and turned over.”

Most drugs are brought into the prisons during contact visits, when inmates meet with family members and friends, officials said. The most popular drug among inmates is Suboxone, largely because the substance is easy to conceal.

The narcotic is manufactured in thin, flat films that look like breath strips. While Suboxone most often is used to treat heroin addiction because it helps to suppress withdrawal, inmates use it behind bars for a high, officials said.

The department has taken steps to stop the flow of drugs into the prisons. It recently banned baggy clothing during visitations in an effort to cut back on smuggling.

Inmates no longer are allowed to receive greeting cards, drawings, or stationery with stickers, which had been used to hide drugs in the mail.

“We had people putting Suboxone onto crayon drawings that were supposedly from their children,” Lyons said.

During the first three months of 2015, officials at the Berlin prison intercepted 10 greeting cards with Suboxone hidden inside the seams, records show. In 2014, a Berlin prison official found two Suboxone strips taped inside a Father’s Day card.

The mail policy is being challenged in court by the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization argues the ban infringes on the free speech rights of families with incarcerated loved ones.

Records show that in many cases, family members are wrapped up in prison drug smuggling.

Last April, one inmate’s mother and another inmate’s wife both were indicted on felonies, accused of trying to deliver contraband in the Concord prison’s visiting room, department records show.

This year, two other women pleaded guilty to delivering contraband to the state prison in Berlin, a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine. One 31-year-old woman tried to deliver heroin to an inmate, and a 28-year-old female tried to smuggle Suboxone to a prisoner. Both inmates also pleaded guilty.

Some drugs are introduced to the prison by staff. State police recently arrested a chef working at the state prison in Berlin after they said he tried to bring more than $67,000 worth of drugs into the building.

The legislative proposal would require all individuals entering a jail or prison, including visitors, staff and inmates, to go through a scanner if the facility has one. The policy stipulates the machines only would be able to create images that “enable the detection of contraband,” but don’t display or record private body parts. In addition to putting the machines in state prisons, the proposal also would establish a $740,000 grant program to help install scanners in county jails.

In a recent high-profile case, 26-year-old Jeffrey Pendleton died behind bars at a Manchester jail while being held on a marijuana possession charge. The state Medical Examiner’s Office said his death resulted from a fentanyl overdose, and ruled it an accident. Fentanyl is a powerful painkiller, up to 40 times more powerful than heroin, and it accounted for about half of the overdose deaths in New Hampshire last year.

The scanner proposal is a late addition this session and hasn’t yet come up for a vote in the House or Senate. House Speaker Shawn Jasper said he requested the legislation.

“Our prisons are sieves,” said Jasper, R-Hudson. “We need to stop the flow of drugs to our prisons, and this is a successful way to do it.”

But not everyone is on board with the scanners. Rep. William Hatch, a D-Gorham, plans to put forward a cheaper option: dogs that can detect contraband and would cost roughly $300,000 to embed in state prisons and county jails. The animals are more mobile and versatile than scanners, Hatch said.

“You can’t bring a cell block down to a scanner, but you can bring a dog up to the cell block,” he said. “States have utilized dogs and were incredibility successful in limiting contraband.”

Wrenn said the Department of Corrections welcomes any tool to stop contraband from entering the prisons. “We have been aggressively trying to fight this for quite some time,” he said.

One correctional facility in New Hampshire already is making use of X-ray machines with success, officials said.

The Strafford County jail in Dover began leasing a full-body scanner last year, and uses it to screen all inmates except pregnant women, according to Chris Brackett, captain of security and operations.

The machine, which is known as a SecurPASS, costs $250,000 looks like a metal detector. Inmates stand on a moving platform that passes them through the machine in a process that takes roughly 90 seconds.

Brackett wouldn’t say how much contraband jail officials have confiscated using the full-body scanner, saying he can’t comment on open investigations. But Brackett said it can detect cellphones and drugs hidden within an inmate’s body. All seized contraband is sent to the County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s not a golden bullet,” Brackett said. “It has been beneficial to us to prevent contraband from coming in.”

It has taken months of practice for prison officials to effectively read the scanner’s images and find hidden contraband. While the machine slows down the jail’s booking process, it also acts as a deterrent to people who try to smuggle drugs.

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