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Would this be your lucky day, or would you turn yourself in?

From Drug War Rant (by way of others):

An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.

A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.

Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.


I mean, I've found pens and pieces of flash drives in my luggage, maybe even the occasional odd dollar bill, but things like this don't happen to me.

Except when they happen in reverse.

In 1980 I was cycling back to the US with approximately 4,500 other troops from the 4th Infantry Division at the completion of Operation REFORGER.

Marijuana and Hash were the big drugs of choice.

I went up the the customs table to face the MP with absolutely no sense of humor.

"Empty your pockets," he told me.

I stuck my hand into each side pocket of my field jacket, and without thinking pulled out two baggies each festooned with vegetable material remains.


I could almost hear Popeye Doyle creaming his jeans for busting the French Connection. They strip-searched me. They used a finger to check areas in which I am usually required to turn my head and cough. They hauled my duffle bag out of the cargo hold and dumped it out. They stuck nails into my shoe polish--my shoe polish!--on the chance that they might find submerged Hash. (Who smokes Hash they've taken out of shoe polish?)

I became an instant, over-night sensation in the 4th ID.

The real answer (which they refused to listen to) was that I had taken a whole bunch of Sci Fi paperbacks to Germany with me for the five-week exercise. Because I knew they could well get wet and destroyed, I had carefully packed each in a ziploc baggie.

When I read each book, I stuck the baggie into my pocket. We moved a lot, and every time we left an area we had to pick up all the trash. It seemed safer to throw crap in your pockets and dump it later than to litter.

Moreover, by the time you'd finished weeks of rolling around in the muck, your pockets had also collected random bits of vegetation from the ground.

Baggie + pieces of vegetation + bleary-eyed GI + moron MP = body cavity search.

All of which is just a long-winded way of saying: if I found 142 g of cannabis in my suitcase in Japan I'd just assume the position right where I was standing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This was a great story. Which I think that those of us who travel may need to use as a cautionary tale -- always check the sidepockets of your luggage BEFORE you send it back through security. You never know what remnants of some security exercise will be left in your possession!

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