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Travelers departing Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports will see an updated piece of equipment when they get past TSA security checkpoints. Newly-designed cannabis amnesty boxes are now in place to dissuade flyers from bringing state-legal weed in their carry-on luggage.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, local airport authorities replaced a set of cannabis amnesty dropboxes with newer, sturdier, and less theft-prone receptacles. And the 2.0 boxes are green, too.
When recreational cannabis sales began in Illinois at the start of the year, Chicago police quickly issued a statement saying that they would not prosecute adults traveling through O’Hare or Midway with legal quantities of weed. Shortly after the announcement, the department installed more than a dozen blue amnesty boxes at security checkpoints in the two airports.
But less than a month after the boxed were installed, a still unidentified man somehow broke into one of the boxes, and was able to take leftover cannabis products as he exited the airport and disappeared into the Windy City. In response to that incident, the city has now removed the original blue boxes and replaced them with more secure devices that are green and easier to recognize. Unlike the original drop boxes, the green replacements are bolted to the ground and are near-impenetrable.
Like their predecessors though, Chicago’s new cannabis amnesty boxes are located at the tail end of the security checkpoint, again indicating that TSA is relatively willing to let passengers fly with cannabis. So if you’re heading out of Chi Town with weed but for some reason want to arrive at your destination dry, just know you’ve got new options for ditching your stash.
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