You can fly with medical cannabis now. Sort of. The TSA’s “What Can I Bring?” tool added medical marijuana as a permitted item the day before Schedule III took effect. The catch is the page that’s supposed to tell you the rules. It’s blank.
Search “marijuana” in the TSA’s What Can I Bring tool today and you get one result: Medical Marijuana. Carry-on bags: Yes (Special Instructions). Checked bags: Yes (Special Instructions). The page was last updated on April 27, the day before Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s narrow rescheduling order took effect.
For the first time since Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, federal law treats some cannabis as something other than Schedule I contraband at a TSA checkpoint. That is news. The catch is in the parentheses. TSA labels it “Special Instructions” without writing any.
The change was first flagged by Black Cannabis Magazine.
What’s actually different
Two specific things. The page used to open with a paragraph explaining that marijuana is illegal under federal law. That paragraph is gone. And the agency’s standing search-disclaimer language, which for years told travelers that TSA officers do not search for “marijuana or other illegal drugs,” now just says “illegal drugs.” One word removed. The page no longer names cannabis as something officers aren’t looking for, because under the new federal posture, some of it isn’t illegal.
Everything else on the page is boilerplate. The screening procedures language. The standing warning that any illegal substance discovered during screening gets referred to law enforcement. The disclaimer that the final decision rests with the officer. None of that is new. None of it tells you what the Special Instructions are.
Who actually qualifies
This is where the news gets narrower than the headlines suggest. …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
