#17 Seth Ferranti on law and morality

Uncharted Territory

Seth Ferranti did 21 years in federal pen for selling large amounts of weed and LSD after two years on the run following his initial arrest, during which time he elaborately staged his own drowning in an attempt to throw police off the scent. But he accidentally did it on the wrong side of the river – the one which flows into a dam and therefore would wash up the body – and his 'suicide' was declared a hoax by police. He then got placed of a list of the most wanted fugitives by US authorities. He went back to selling cannabis, and got caught smoking a joint outside a fast food joint while doing a weed deal. His fingerprints matched him up with the man who was on the run.

Inside, he gained three college degrees, started website Gorilla Convict, and became a columnist for Vice and wrote about the stories of gangsters from their perspectives and the victims of the war on drugs. He would sometimes get placed in solitary confinement for his articles, so he'd work on his books instead. Released in 2015, his 2017 documentary White Boy, on the story of a FBI informant and cocaine kingpin, was on Netflix for a year before hitting other streaming platforms. He tells us about tripping on acid in prison, his new film, The Secret History of the LSD Trade, and feeling vindicated as a trailblazer, as cannabis and psychedelics are increasingly mainstreamed. His forthcoming documentary, A Tortured Mind, covers the failure of the authorities to reintegrate former prisoners back into society. The protagonist, not long out of prison, OD'd while they were making the film. You can check out the profile on Seth in High Times, as well as this Rolling Stone piece on his case while he was in the early years of his prison 'bid'.