Even weed is political in prison
A glimpse into the federal prison cannabis scene
Daniel Muessig, also known as Dos-Noun, currently lives at a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. An FBI raid in May 2019 forced the closure of his illegal cannabis business. Two and a half years later, while working as a real estate developer and landlord, he was indicted for the 2019 incident due to the widespread use of informants. Refusing to cut a deal or speak to authorities, he was given a mandatory 5-year prison sentence in the federal system, a sentence he is now serving. He mailed me this text in a letter, which bluntly (no pun intended) details cannabis and other drug use at the prison in which he lives.
This is not a pretty story, but it is true.
Cannabis use in federal prisons is common, if not widespread. It's also highly problematic for the user because being caught with even trace amounts in your system results in a series 100 shot (The highest level of incident report.) The sole activity that I have seen prisoners get in trouble for that carries greater weight than cannabis is getting caught with a phone.
Both activities are rated as more severe than assault or rape.
The feds still consider cannabis to be a highly dangerous and illegal substance. They make no allowance for it being a less hazardous or benign drug. Their attitude towards it in court filters down to the compound.
That said, it is widely consumed. At camps, people can cop fire eighths for $40, which is slightly higher than street prices but a far cry from the $50 a pen cap of desiccated, crumbled flower whose provenance is good of yours as it is of mine.
Staff tolerance varies widely by compound. Some federal spots, such as USPs and Core Civic Holding centers, don't concern themselves with what we do as much, and specific staff are always pliable when the arbitrage becomes known to them. But these lanes also constrict or close with alarming speed for those of us in this cloistered world. So, the price, quality, and availability of everything fluctuate rapidly.
As of now, pen caps are what I could best describe as extremely dry work flav shakes that go for $50.
0.10 eyeballed goes for a book of stamps (Our currency), now $10.
The preferred delivery method for cannabis is wax or extracts. Budder, sugar, or shatter entropically decomposing to budder is smeared on blunt wrap papers.
A gram is $300. A single tiny rolling paper is a book. These are combined with tea leaves (tobacco being a double dip for expenditure) to create volume and mass and smoked.
Sometimes, some fire rosin shows up, and one can smell the terpenes from 300 feet away. The amount of money paid means that quality is possible—just not probable. I've been called on numerous times as a weed guy emeritus to referee quality and strain.
Young kids and experienced heads will smoke as much as they can. But the danger of a drug test lurks.
Here, they come at night after the 12 a.m. count and smack your bunk. The lookouts flag them with a "FLOOOOOOR" alert call, but they make it up fast.
They tell you to get dressed, and you are soon under a night sky for one of the sole times you will be until you are free. They search for you and administer a test with more panels than a solar farm.
Guys will often try and bonk the test with pubic hair or bleach concealed.
I watched a guy get hit for a glove balloon of fake piss and go to the SHU one night at 1 AM.
It's foreboding to walk into the Lieutenant's office at any time, especially in the middle of the night.
The results come back weeks later, and then the men disappear.
The largest betrayer of cannabis use in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is the user's endocannabinoid system. Since this stuff is pretty good for the user, the body greedily holds onto it in the fat cells. There it lays, a dormant snitch till the testing comes, and away one goes.
To combat the BOP jihad against weed smoking, the market innovated via the introduction of K2. This synthetic cannabinoid appears to have been designed by a fucking Batman villain for the sole purpose of making everyone's life absolute hell.
Locked in Han Solo stasis, head laid in window frame, biting other men's shoulders, doing a breakdancing worm on the hallway floor/the patented swimming move so prevalent when the limbic system shuts down, or being wacky waving inflatable flailing arms guy for hours on end until they collapse in a pile of seemingly dead bodies on the floor, these assholes ruin EVERYTHING. I've seen deuceheads (our name for them) shriek about God and Satan and ritualistic sex with their sisters with an enthusiasm that would shame anyone in NYC. Sometimes catatonic. Other times animatedly violent, they are a fucking bane. They can always be distinguished by the fact they only wear khaki. All their sweat clothes sold over time to feed the deuce dragon. I've seen them dive off tiers during transit and locked up on floors and beds while they defecate screaming.
It's a cheap and fun drug that does not show up on drug tests and, therefore, fills the negative space for cannabis users who don't want to go to the SHU but are past caring what happens to them.
I will point out that you have to do time to know how much it hurts. You'll seek anything to kill that pain. And you are becoming a hallway sleeping wraith clad in dirt-impregnated khaki, stealing headphones and single batteries so you can do Victorian Era faints down institutional staircases and throw feces-drenched sheets at your friends while wailing is one of them.
But you won't go to SHU. Or instead, it's tough to.
ID-sized doses of K2 are cheap—far more so than weed. And mail makes it easy to flood them in. As they are odorless and can be on any paper medium, the introduction is a cinch and a treat for us.
I remember a deucehead selling my chicken twice in transit, and I had to enter his cell and grip him up to retake the chicken I'd paid for.
He had a spiderweb tattooed on his head like a shower cap and looked like a cyberpunk henchman/minion. Malnourished and deeply insane. He was a vision of the drug's ravages and ended up going to the SHU in transit for a deuce, which was the equivalent of a crosscourt NBA buzzer-beater trifecta of abject loserdom. But in the wash of his 218-month sentence, who is counting?
The most insidious drug of all available is suboxone. Used to ward off the worst symptoms of opiate withdrawal, the strips are divided into 8ths, 16ths, and 32nds, fluted nasally with water or introduced ocularly, and then work as a de facto opiate when abused.
Users constantly complain that the high is so fleeting and the withdrawal so profound.
Once addicted, the user is 99% certain never to quit. And it cues them up for fentanyl addiction in the world.
Stealing, sex trade, and manipulation of family are rife to keep the warm muslin blanket pulled over one's head.
These show up on drug tests, which is ever so slightly disingenuous given that the compound medical center dispenses them via the MAT program. MAT plays favorites and is more challenging to get into than Yale. I've seen a literal child rapist get admitted while a drug dealer father of 2 who didn't tell got turned down—vagaries of incarceration.
Over time, the subs rule the user. Their dilated eyes only fade when they get sick and the monkey claws them back. Sub junkies come off sad and desperate, shouldering the weight of the strips and the time.
But you can have a suboxone card here. Never a weed one.
Daniel Muessig, also known as Dos-Noun, currently lives at a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Scooby Snacks…
Sha’Carri Richardson is going to the Olympics! I wrote about her expulsion during the last go-around in 2021.
This Miami Herald piece details the devastating toll taken on the environment by indoor grows. Of course, we know it need not be this way with better legislation.
MJBizDaily’s Chris Cassachia details the fallout from the LA Times vape investigation.
The IRS wants to ensure that cannabis businesses know that they cannot take tax deductions for business expenses until rescheduling is complete.
It’s always nice to see legislation decriminalizing paraphernalia. Those kinds of laws are frequently the ones left un-turned-over. This time, it’s happening in Louisiana.
The esteemed HousingWorks in NYC is issuing a cannabis membership swap for people with illegal dispensary cards in an effort to get consumers into the legal market.
My friend Cara Wietstock wrote about why you shouldn't consume weed before getting a tattoo, and I wish she had interviewed me because I would have agreed. Afterwards, absolutely. Before or during: very bad idea. I’m very experienced in this realm, so please trust me.
PS…have you noticed the High Times website has been down for about a week? Who knows why!? ; )
Severe paranoia moment
Only one seed of many has popped above the soil, and although I still have many days to go, I am not enjoying waiting because they are very special seeds from Fig Farms. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, and may all of your thoughts be with my girls and boys-to-be.
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