Even if your weed gummies are legal in your state, they are technically illegal to board a plane. Does this mean you would be stopped at the airport for having them in your luggage? Probably not.
In the United States, air transportation falls under federal jurisdiction, so airports and planes comply with federal marijuana law. Under this law, it is illegal to consume marijuana products (gummies, mints, tinctures, etc.) that contain more than 0.3% THC on a dry weight basis, so you can't fly with them.
“Even though it's for medical purposes, it's still illegal at the federal level,” said John McGowan, managing partner of Kinner and McGowana cannabis law firm in Washington, DC
Anything with less than 0.3% THC is considered hemp, so if your weed gummies are more like CBD gummies with an extremely low dose of THC, you would be allowed to pack them for flying.
However, airport security isn't designed to track down your weed candy.
According to Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, TSA agents are trained to detect potential threats to aviation; they do not look for illegal drugs.
If a TSA agent encounters it during the screening process, they can confiscate it, ask the traveler to throw it into a cannabis amnesty box or refer the matter to law enforcement. The risk of the latter is higher if the officer discovers large quantities of marijuana, if you are in a state where weed is illegal, or if the discovery of the weed is “coupled with something else,” a McGowan said.
For example, law enforcement may be called because you had cannabis. And a large sum of money or cannabis And a bunch of bullets in your bag.
Mikhail Kogan, author of the book “Medical Marijuana” and medical director of the GW Center for Integrative Medicine, says a few patients have told him they were stopped at the airport for their medical marijuana products, but not because of their THC content. Instead, they were flagged because they were in liquid form and exceeded the TSA's carry-on liquid limit in size. Kogan has yet to have a patient arrested for carrying weed candy.
International travel is a different story. Kogan says your risks increase exponentially if you try to take cannabis abroad. “We know how this is going to go for you,” he said, referring to the case of American basketball player Brittney Griner, who was caught traveling in Russia with small quantities of cannabis oil and imprisoned for more than nine month.
In the rare event that you've been arrested for possessing edibles at a U.S. airport, “in practice, prosecutors have much more important things to do than prosecute people who carried candy onto planes,” the lawyer said. Washington Aviation Lawyer. Marc Lindquist said in an email. “These cases are generally not prosecuted.”
He continued: “That said, while it is very unlikely that you will be arrested and prosecuted for gummies, bringing an illegal substance onto a plane could still turn into a serious problem and disappointment.”
All that could change if the United States reclassifies marijuana as a lower-risk drug, as Attorney General Merrick Garland has said. recently recommended. This decision would mean that cannabis would be treated more like a prescription drug like codeine, Kogan said. But he doesn't expect reclassification to happen anytime soon.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
In the meantime, your gummies are banned on planes. So it is to be really high at the airport, so don't overdo it with a last-minute dose before your trip.
“It should be noted that under Federal Aviation Regulators Section 121.575, the airline must not allow a person to board 'if that person appears to be intoxicated,'” Lindquist said. “Usually it means drunk, but it also means high. »
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