The USPS Got Overwhelmed by 34,000 Pounds of Weed Last Year
Mailing weed still isn't legal, everyone.
Even though recent legislation has now made marijuana legal in eight states and the District of Columbia, sending someone weed in the mail is still a big no-no. But a lot of stoners didn’t get the message, and the United States Postal Service faces some trouble dealing with all the weed that has inevitably ended up in its system. In October, the organization conducted an internal audit that revealed what often ends up happening to intercepted pot along with being filled with hilarious redactions that do little other than give people a little space to imagine what’s going on when their local post offices come across some ganja.
According to the report, the Postal Inspection Service seized a whopping 34,000 pounds of marijuana in 2015. The goal of the audit was to “address allegations regarding postal employees’ handling of packages suspected of containing marijuana at seven post offices in the Capital Metro, Great Lakes, Pacific, and Western areas.” After the investigation, the Office of Inspector General recommended that management puts into place a nationwide policy for tracking and securing packages that might have little Ms. Mary Juana hiding inside of them, along with training workers on how to responsibly handle the suspected contraband.
In the audit, there are some pretty damning findings on situations where postal workers came across pot. At one location, management was unable to explain why there was a broken lock on a cage where possible pot-holding packages were kept. Meanwhile, other locations just had the parcels sitting in managements’ offices that are often left unlocked. So it’s possible that there was just a bunch of weed chilling unsupervised and slightly accessible for anyone to come in and swipe it.
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One part of the report reads “the tracking should be comprehensive to include initial retrieval from the mail to final disposition and reporting all packages suspected of being lost or stolen and related employee misconduct to the Office of Inspector General,” which slightly implies that management needs to keep better records of what’s happening with these pot packages because if not employees could just be strolling out of work with some recreational materials.
If the data wasn’t entertaining enough, all the redactions peppered throughout the report are sure to bring some laughs.
The possibilities are endless, really.
Everything blacked-out is reminiscent of a scene on television getting the bleeped-out treatment when a character goes on a rampage of curse words. And all the mystery could be turned into a fun game of Mad Libs. Just think of all the fun:
“When postal employees suspect a package contains marijuana or any illegal drug, they must SMOKE IT RIGHT AWAY, inform a supervisor, and contact the Postal Inspection Service for guidance. MUNCHIES WILL NOT BE PROVIDED FOR THOSE THAT PARTAKE IN THIS BEHAVIOR.”
Later on in the report, the information gets very sensitive. Even the footnotes have to be redacted.
Not telling us very much at all here, y'all.
Obviously, the U.S. Postal Service is struggling to deal with the epidemic of weed being mailed through its service and making efforts to fix the problem. And while it works on that, we can just enjoy seeing how the federal agency makes changes, many of which it obviously doesn’t want the public knowing all the inner-workings of.
