How And Why The United States Postal Service Is Stealing Your Weed

Everyone knows cannabis is still illegal at the federal level. But apparently, people either don’t know — or don’t care — that mailing ganja through the United States Postal Service (USPS) is also illegal.

Just because cannabis is legal in a particular state doesn’t mean someone can ship it through the USPS. But now that recreational marijuana is legal in 8 states, the amount of weed people are shipping is going through the roof.

In fact, in 2015 the Postal Inspective Service managed to round up a colossal 17 tons of marijuana. Score! But that fact has people asking: what happened to the 34,000 pounds of weed seized from by the United States Postal Service?

And the answer is (partly) revealed by a 2015 investigation, which says there’s a good chance postal workers are stealing the weed they find in the mail.

Falling Off The Back of The United States Postal Service Truck

The United States Postal Service is basically choking on all the marijuana that’s ended up in its system. So much so that it prompted an internal investigation to try to figure out what happened to the cannabis after employees discovered it.

The result of that investigation was a 2015 report, but officials heavily redacted the public version. Still, it’s not hard to imagine what it says. And the evidence seems to be very embarrassing for the USPS.

According to the report, the audit’s goal was to look into “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.” Heads up to anyone mailing weed in those places!

So the audit looked into weed legal and weed prohibited regions. Apparently, what inspectors found was enough to prompt the Inspector General to make a nationwide policy addressing the issue.

Post Offices around the country are about to get some hands-on training on tracking and properly handling suspected pot packages.

Broken Locks, Open Offices, Missing Packages

The hilarious parts of the report are in the details. At one Post Office location, no one had any explanation for a busted lock on the gate of a cage holding some packages suspected of stashing some Mary J.

At another location, management was keeping the cannabis-containing packages in open offices where anyone could come by and take them.

Some suspicious packages vanished entirely. As the report reads,

“the tracking should be comprehensive to include  reporting all packages suspected of being lost or stolen and related employee misconduct to the Office of Inspector General.”

So apparently someone’s not keeping adequate records. There’s one likely possibility. Postal workers are heading home for the day with some recreational materials in tow.

Fill In The Blanks

Most of the report from the USPS investigation is entirely blacked out. So the imagination has some room to wander. Fill in the blanks, and life at the Post Office suddenly seems much more entertaining than many would expect.

Whatever it says, the information is clearly very sensitive. And it shows that the USPS is having a tough time handling the flood of cannabis people are mailing through its services. Maybe it’s time to end the prohibition of cannabis nationwide. It may even be the best way to save the United States’ dying Postal Service.