The #1 Mistake People Make When Flying with Weed (and 9 Tested Tips For Flying Without Issue)

Here’s How I Fly With Weed (2021 Edition)

Jun 2, 2021

Dear Friend & Subscriber -

I spent this past Memorial Day Weekend in a small town in Michigan, enjoying fresh buds from my garden and some exceptional concentrates from Colorado.

I can’t tell you how many people asked me how I managed to fly with weed.

As the country (and world) reopen and travel restrictions loosen, many are getting back to flying. While we were all quarantined at home, four more states legalized adult-use cannabis (for a total of 15), meaning that 1 in 3 Americans lives in a state where cannabis is legal. To date, 36 states have legalized cannabis for medical purposes, and countless locales have decriminalized or all but legalized the plant in recent years.

Statistically, more people are flying with legal weed than ever before, leaving the rest wondering how they do it.

TSA has regularly stated (including as recently as April 2020) that they are not looking for cannabis. I’ve talked about this on Quora before (and they remain among my most-viewed answers each month).

TSA reminds travelers that "screening procedures are focused on security and detecting potential threats.” But if they search your bag for another reason and stumble on your bag of herbs, they have full discretion to notify law enforcement, confiscate the bags, or worse. But here’s the honest truth:

TSA does not want to take your weed. (They don’t even want to find it).

And the only reason they usually find it is when something else in your bags raised a red flag.

The #1 Mistake People Make When Flying With Cannabis

It’s easy to suffer from myopia when flying with pot. All you can think about is the pot. The pot in your bag. The pot in your bag that the TSA agent is most certainly going to find.

And it’s easy to forget about everything else, including commonly-overlooked-yet-airport-prohibited items like half empty water bottles, slightly oversized cosmetic bottles, and blowtorches (for your dab rig, let’s not get carried away).

Without question, the #1 mistake when flying with pot is not paying attention to everything else in your bag.

My bags get pulled all the time, usually with weed in them.

This last time flying back from Detroit, I had some cherrywood smoked cooking salts and summer sausages that set the machine off. They had to pull out all sorts of testing equipment to make sure my unopened can of clearly-labeled salt was actually salt. Same with the sausage (turns out dense meats can look like very bad things like plastic explosives).

The #1 mistake people make when flying with weed is having something ELSE aside from cannabis that gets their bags pulled.

The second mistake is not properly packing your bags to avoid incident, which is why I’m going to share a handful of tested tips that have put put through the wringer even as recently as May 2021.

9 Tried & Tested Tips for Flying with Cannabis Without Issues:

These tips are for educational purposes only. Familiarize yourself with all applicable laws in your area. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Carry on your pot. It’s a question of having your bags screened with you present, or landing and finding out something went awry. While it might seem tempting to slip it into your checked luggage, I’d much rather have the peace of mind once I’m through security that I am not going to land and be greeted by law enforcement in a place that may or may not have legal cannabis.
If you have your Medical Card/Recommendation, bring at least one printed copy with you. I err on the side of caution and place printed copies in any luggage that might have cannabis, and have even been known to put my card right next to the cannabis should it be discovered in a search.
Don’t put it all in one place. This one may seem obvious, but it’s tempting to throw it all at the bottom of the bag and bury it in clothes. Spreading out your odds is the oldest trick in the book, and hedges your bet in case some of your weed is discovered.
Toiletries are your friend. Especially with concentrates that come in packaging akin to makeup and cosmetics, throwing your hash jars in with your toiletries is a great way to conceal them. If you have temperature sensitive items like solventless, you can put them back into your chilled carrying device (such as a Terp Chiller) once you are through security.
Remove other prohibited items. Duh. Anything that the airport is actually looking for is going to increase the chances of your bags being pulled, which increases the likelihood of your herbs being discovered. Water bottles, large shampoos, and, apparently, cooking salts, are not great items for remain inconspicuous.
There’s a chance you will still have an inspection (happens to me all the time), but they are typically looking for less than a handful of unclear items that they couldn’t discern on screen. Don’t panic, and hopefully you paid attention to #3 and #4.
Clean any paraphernalia as best you can. I fly with rigs all the time. And I cannot tell you the comfort that comes from a $1.97 bottle of isopropyl alcohol and an extra 15 minutes in the hotel or AirBnB bathroom cleaning your smoking devices. If everything is clean, they can inspect it all they want, but it’s simply a piece of glass art. (Bonus Tip: The less like a “bong” or “pipe” your piece looks, the less likely you’ll have an issue, and you may even catch a compliment from TSA).
Avoid states that truly hate weed. Even in today’s social climate, there are states and airports that still specifically hate weed and hate people who smoke it. Avoid states like Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, and Tennessee and anywhere with an explicit cannabis policy that is not favorable to your plans.
Don’t dress like a stoner. Look, before you even start, you’re right; you shouldn’t have to dress a certain way for people to think a certain way about you. But whether we like it or not, society operates on stereotypes all day as a sort of “cache” for all of the sensory inputs we receive. We recognize colors and patterns and signs that subconsciously direct our brains.
TSA agents and law enforcement who see 1000s of people every day know how to pick people out of a crowd based on specific stereotypes, and a loud tie dye hoodie that reeks of weed, and a backpack that says “I Have Drugs” are much more likely to get you searched than a plain t-shirt and duffle-bag (they even make nondescript smell-proof ones). The more you blend in, the less they’ll notice you.
Vac seal everything. This might not be necessary, but it is especially helpful with keeping fragrances down while protecting them for later. I always vac seal flower, and will often vac seal opened edibles or concentrates if they are not air tight. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.

My best advice is vac seal and spread your product out, dispersing it among clothing and toiletries. Clean everything, and try not to draw attention to yourself until after you pass through security. I’d also avoid tagging the actual airport in posts about what you may or may not have gotten through security until you are no longer at that actual airport.

Best,

Ben “High Flying” Owens

P.S.

If you haven’t already heard, The Grow-Off postponed their Colorado launch out of extreme caution for the clones being distributed to contestants. As a result, I won’t be diving into that process this month but will keep everyone posted on updates.

Speaking of updates, the wretched Colorado cannabis bill that we discussed a few weeks back has passed both committees and headed to the House floor for a vote last week. No mention of any amendments that matter.

Lastly, premium content begins releasing this week, starting tomorrow with complete diagrams and instructions for my automated irrigation setup for a 4x4’ tent (the way I did it), followed shortly thereafter by a discussion on why I’m not invested in cannabis stocks.

For less than $4.20 a month ($50/year), premium subscribers get in-depth analysis, insights, and deeper dives into lessons learned from growing and working in the cannabis industry, including insider insights, and the intersection of cannabis with mainstream culture (crypto, Fortune 500 companies, etc.), as well as layouts and schematics from my current grow setup. Founding members also receive lifetime access to my eBook library, including past releases as well as future releases (such as the book I’ve been working on this year).

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