Travel planning can be overwhelming, especially during the holidays. Thankfully, there’s this nifty thing called cannabis that can help you survive a certain geriatric relative’s rant about “those people”. But traveling with weed can be a stress of its own.
Here’s a few tips to ease the strain:
First, international ganja smuggling is a no-no. Discovery of cannabis while boarding an international flight will definitely cause you some trouble and may even lead to jail time.
As for joining the mile high cannabis club–also, NO. Take it from a ballsy flier earlier this year who grounded a Delta flight from SF to LA by smoking a joint in a bathroom. It’s not worth the jail time or the $3.000 fine.
Now, although cannabis enjoys various levels of legality in District of Columbia and 10 states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—it’s still federally illegal and banned from U.S airspace. This creates the strange situation in which you can fly from Los Angeles to Seattle and buy legal weed on both ends, but still can’t bring your own weed on the flight.
However, airports in some states have adopted their own policies on pot, granting some leeway to flyers.
Let’s start out west. In September of 2018, an update to the Los Angeles Airport’s website garnered many headlines announcing that passengers can now take a state-legal quantity of cannabis (up to 28.5 grams) through LAX security and onto their flights. Similar guidelines apply to airports in San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, but only in compliance with local possession limits—-so keep it under an ounce for safety.
As for Oregon, passengers flying within the state are allowed to carry a legal quantity of recreational weed onto their flight as long as they’re not heading outside of the state.
Denver Intl airport is not so chill. Passengers should discard their dank before arriving. If police find legal amounts of any pot-based products, they ask flyers to return the items home. If they can’t, they’re simply confiscated without consequence of criminal penalty.
McCarran airport in Vegas will take it a step further. If pot’s discovered in your bags or on your person, local police won’t just confiscate it — they’ll cite you for the violation if it’s a legal quantity, and arrest you if it’s not. To help travelers avoid this, authorities have installed green “amnesty boxes” for passengers to ditch their bud in.
Although cannabis is legal within Alaska, Maine, and Vermont, pot policies at their airports are still unclear.
For now, if you’re traveling within in the U.S., make sure you know the local rules wherever you are, and most importantly, use your best judgment! Be careless and you may find yourself eating Thanksgiving dinner in the clink.
