Across the U.S., flyers operating with false information have been arrested by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, because they were carrying the non-psychoactive hemp compound CBD.
Since the Farm Bill of 2018 passed in December legalizing the substance, confusion has reigned at the airports of America. TSA agents made headlines most recently with a string of arrests for CBD in luggage and carry-ons at Dallas-Fort Worth, but these types of cases have occurred across the country. [1]
Now, the administration is allowing some forms of CBD.
As long as the CBD products fit legal requirements (namely, if they contain less than 0.3% THC), they will be allowed on planes and won’t trigger an arrest from the TSA, according to TSA.gov. [2]
According to the site, TSA doesn’t go out of its way to seek drugs when scanning for safety issues, but reports them to police when it finds them. Understandably, this was enough to put plenty of honest, harmless people in jail for carrying the unassuming CBD.
People have been using CBD for years in states that have legalized the overall use of marijuana in medical and recreational contexts, but it has grown rapidly since the farm bill as people turn to it for their chronic pain, insomnia, epilepsy and a bevy of other conditions they prefer not to treat with powerful pharmaceuticals.
Not only do they want to avoid high prescription and medical costs from pills, many CBD users want a more organic and holistic approach to their health, with far fewer additives and harmful side effects.
Still, many federal bodies don’t quite know how to handle the CBD craze. TSA’s new rules explain that CBD products are allowed on planes as long as they don’t have illegal levels of THC — the psychoactive compound within marijuana that gets its users high — but don’t lay out any sort of practical way that they will determine whether the levels are proper, instead sending the cases to law enforcement to do what they will. [3]
This is seemingly a surface-level face saving measure that will result in all the same excesses as before. If every hemp flower in a carry-on gets referred to a local police agency, many of whom have shown in recent months that they have no competence in telling hemp from marijuana, which they have long prosecuted fiercely, results could be dire.
That’s why even though the TSA’s new rules are promising for CBD fans, it will still be important now more than ever to push for the right to consume and travel with this all-natural, harmless remedy that is changing America.
Sources