0:00:00.0 April Pride, host: This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.
0:00:10.2 Jackie Bryant, journalist: I had someone from the TSA, on record, say, “We are not looking for your weed. We don’t care, the dogs are not for that, but yes, if we find it, we are technically obligated to take it.”
0:00:22.3 April Pride, host: Welcome to The High Guide. I’m your host, April Pride. Traveling with weed, regardless if by air, road, or rail, can be a stressful experience. However, many stoners will agree, being able to get high at your destination is well worth the risk of packing it along for the ride. But just how illegal is traveling with weed in the era of legalization? And if you’re a traveling toker, what should you have in your stash? In this episode of The High Guide, our panel of guides share their pro tips for packing your pot properly and navigating some of the new age nuances of traveling with cannabis, which brings us to our glossary term of the week, chillum, a lesser known piece of paraphernalia often praised for its on-the-go functionality. Also referred to as a one-hitter or bat, they’re small and discrete and come highly recommended for their simplicity and stash-ability. Let’s meet our high guides for this episode. Jackie Bryant, Veronica Castillo, and Amanda Reiman.
0:01:25.1 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: Yeah, so for me, a lot of my travel is on the road, and so I have a little box, and I put it in the trunk. I don’t do… I call it reckless, just because it’s kind of like, we know we shouldn’t. We know we have something, and I don’t like to take the additional risk, so I don’t do things like smoke while I’m driving. But, too, I operate as a Black woman in America, so the smell of it alone, even if I’m in a place where they’re not supposed to stop you for that, they could find a reason, just any other reason, so I’ll pull over, and I’ll get out of the car and I’ll… I travel as safe as possible considering that I’m a Black woman in America, and I could get the nice guy who loves weed and who just gives me a pass or the asshole that could take my life that day. So I just, I’ll put it in the trunk, and I’ll just let it stay back there, I’ll pull off the highway and go to a park and consume and things like that. At the beach, just… I don’t want my car to smell like it, unless I’m staying somewhere an extended period of time, like Portland, which is so… People talk a lot about California, and California is most definitely our cannabis Mecca, but Oregon should not be slept on. It’s so easy-breezy, like, “It’s okay, we all love weed too,” Oregon, and it’s a little different.
0:02:55.9 April Pride, host: Well, everything’s legal there now.
0:02:58.0 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: I know, it’s just… Oregon is just so so there. If I’m staying there, and I’m at an Airbnb, most of the time, I can’t smoke inside, I don’t have a problem smoking in my car because the smell of it in my car in Oregon, no one…
0:03:11.5 April Pride, host: Yeah.
0:03:11.8 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: It’s in the air, essentially. So just, it goes back to the culture. Wherever you’re going to visit, wherever you’re traveling through, it’s… A lot of it is just judgment calls along the way and going with your gut, ’cause a lot of times we’ll feel some shit, and we’ll just ignore that shit, and we shouldn’t. [chuckle]
0:03:28.7 April Pride, host: Totally, I like the, if you’re gonna be risking something already, you’re being risky. Why be reckless?
0:03:34.2 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: Yeah.
0:03:34.9 April Pride, host: So traveling, one of the tips that I… I have a friend, she’ll roll a dozen joints and then she will vacuum seal, put them in a vacuum seal bag, and that’s what she’ll take when she goes to Hawaii, for instance. So do you all prep your weed that you’re traveling with in that way to make sure that the smell is contained and that…
0:03:54.6 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: How honest are we being here?
0:03:56.7 April Pride, host: We are being honest.
0:03:57.3 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: It wasn’t illegal.
0:03:58.0 April Pride, host: We are being honest.
0:03:58.6 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: And there’s what really happened, if I’m being honest.
0:04:02.4 April Pride, host: Yeah, I think that’s why everyone’s here. Just tell… [laughter] Yes.
0:04:05.0 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Yeah, I have smell-proof bags, and I use those, but I have to admit, very rarely anymore in old, slightly lazy, age do I actually vacuum seal anything anymore. I do, if it involves the mail in any way, but traveling, I pretty much stick to a smell-proof stash bag, and then I’ll repackage items, not in their original packaging, so maybe like a Ziploc bag or something that is additionally sealed. But I don’t really do the vacuum thing anymore, but it’s a very good idea. And it’s really not expensive to get a vacuum sealer, and so I do recommend it. I’m just honestly kind of a little bit lazy, but I do remove it from the original packaging, I do take those little THC, exclamation point logo off. I do try to obscure it as much as I can because, why leave that on there? That’s just asking for it.
0:04:59.5 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: Agreed. Yeah, I don’t do the… I’m like you, I just… It seems like a lot of work, and if I’m already being sort of careful, I just take those precautions, like obvious packaging and stuff like that. I haven’t… I don’t do the vacuum seal stuff.
0:05:14.0 Jackie Bryant, journalist: Yeah, I don’t do that either. But the smell, I mean, if you’re buying cannabis in a glass jar, and it’s got the little seal on top and you don’t open it before you take it, it’s not gonna smell. Same with edibles, there’s so much packaging around them that they’re not gonna smell. So usually I just won’t open the packaging, and I stick it in my lingerie bag or something like that. What I do have a habit of doing is, on my way home, I’ll usually stick my pipe and things in my dirty clothes in my suitcase because I figure no one’s gonna go rifling through the sweaty gross workout clothes that have been sitting in my suitcase for a week.
0:05:46.7 April Pride, host: That’s amazing. That’s such a good idea.
0:05:49.8 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: I stick them with my sex toys, personally. [laughter]
0:05:53.5 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Not gonna lie, I would really do that.
0:05:56.1 April Pride, host: I put it in my toiletry bag or my tech kit, ’cause I feel like it all kinda looks weird anyway.
0:05:59.8 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Yeah, the toiletry bag.
0:06:00.4 April Pride, host: Yeah.
0:06:02.0 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Yeah, or I have one of those little stash bags and things like that. But I arrived once, I think I was flying from California to DC, and… Just before it was legal in DC. And I arrived there and… You open your suitcase, and you have that little note from TSA like, “Your bag has been inspected.” And I don’t know what I was thinking when I packed, but my bag reeked of weed. It just lit up the whole hotel room when I opened the bag, and there’s my little note saying they had inspected my bag, but the weed was all still in there, so I guess…
0:06:34.1 Jackie Bryant, journalist: That happened to me too, coming back from Hawaii, but I noticed a little was missing, and I was like, honestly, if that’s it, if the baggage handler wanted [0:06:41.5] ____ great. Spread it around, I have tons of weed, that’s awesome. I figured that was the biggest win-win for everybody, I was like, “I didn’t get caught, but they did see it, and also the baggage handler took some. That’s a good outcome for me.”
0:06:55.8 April Pride, host: I saw this product recently, it’s out of Canada, called the Joint locker, and you put it… It’s a lighter that you put it… And a sleeve is the actual locker, and you can put a joint with it for traveling on the go. Not necessarily far destinations, but on the go. And I have a small, little bag that has… It’s more narrow at one end than the other, so it slips in my back pocket really easily, and I can fit a pipe and a tool, a multi-tool, one of the vendor pot multi-tools, and I save all my doob tubes, so I can put something in there, or I can put a flower in there and papers and a grinder card. Do you guys have a little kit that you travel with, that you know if you pick a flower in the road, you can do anything with your little MacGyver kit?
0:07:48.8 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Oh yeah, I have a whole kit. I need a poker, which is, for me, paper clips. So I need some extra paper clips. I have my pipe that I like, and I don’t wanna smoke out of a different pipe, so I have to bring my pipe with me.
0:08:01.2 April Pride, host: Is it glass? Is it glass?
0:08:02.5 Jackie Bryant, journalist: Mm-hmm.
0:08:02.8 April Pride, host: It is, okay.
0:08:03.5 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: Yeah, my little glass pipe. And then I have to have a grinder, so I have my little travel grinder, and then my lighter. And then I’ll bring pre-rolls, also is important when I travel, because you’re at parties or you wanna be able to take something out with you, and obviously, loading a bowl can be more tedious and cumbersome when you’re out and about. So, I definitely recommend pre-rolls. I recommend, if you can get them, mini pre-rolls, because one thing that’s really annoying when you’re out and you got a big joint that you can’t finish, it’s gross later, and where do you put it. So, I would recommend trying to get little Dogwalkers because they’re really great for right before you go into a restaurant or right before you go into a club. If you have to put it out right away because somebody comes and yells at you, it’s no big deal because you didn’t waste that much. I like to keep it simple, just the tools I know I need to get my medicine, to do it efficiently, so yeah, that’s my plan.
0:08:59.3 Jackie Bryant, journalist: I always just assumed, I can’t believe… This is enlightening to me. I just always assumed I couldn’t travel with a pipe, ’cause I just figured, a used pipe, you’re toast. You get caught with it. I think like being a kid again and being like, “Oh, there’s… This is paraphernalia.” So, I actually never travel with pipes, but you guys are giving me hope that maybe I can again. I have a stash of glass chillums that I’ll bring with me and leave at my destination, but if… Do you clean them when you’re done? Do you give it a really good clean before you get back on the plane or whatever?
0:09:32.4 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: No. Honestly, I have it in my smell-proof…
0:09:35.5 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: I have it in my little smell-proof kit, StashLogix. StashLogix. So, I have got their little bag, and I put it in there and it doesn’t smell at all. But again, sometimes on the way home, I’ll put it in my bag of dirty clothes. [chuckle]
0:09:50.5 Jackie Bryant, journalist: Right. No, this is great, this is… I don’t know, it’s the one weird sticky point that I have, and I’m realizing that it… I have actual weed in the bag, it actually doesn’t make sense.
0:10:01.7 April Pride, host: Okay, while our High Guides definitely have a wide range of comfort regarding traveling with weed, they certainly agree that the smell is the number one factor to be considered. Maybe you’re up there in the vacuum seal range, where you’re taking the extra precaution to protect your pot, maybe a simple smell-proof bag is more your speed, maybe you bring a chillum and leave with the housekeeping at the hotel, the point here is, there’s an option for every comfort level, and everyone is different for profoundly different reasons.
0:10:32.3 Veronica Castillo, cannabis travel writer: I don’t fuck around. I don’t care what TSA says, I’m Black in America, so I do not fuck around. [chuckle] And so, because I travel, and I’m going to cannabis businesses, I’ll be taking care of when I land. And so, because my travel is tied to work, I don’t like to take those kind of chances. I might travel with up to an ounce if I’m doing a road trip, but I’m not messing with federal people as a Black woman in America. So, I just say, if you’re landing somewhere, where you’re gonna [0:11:02.1] ____ against them, it’s not worth taking the risk.
0:11:05.0 Amanda Reimann, Personal Plants: But going back to this point about TSA and the experience at the airport, everyone just has to think about, “What will happen to me if I get caught?” And that is gonna be different for each of us. I feel like if I get caught, probably not the worst is gonna happen. If I’m in a legal state, maybe they will tell me to put it out or, “That’s not allowed here.” So, I think that’s what people really have to ask themselves. What is the culture of the place you’re going and how does that culture react to who you are, and what will happen if you get in trouble? And I hope that we reach a time when we don’t have to think about that. But right now, I think it’s up to each individual to assess their own risk, and then just act accordingly.
0:11:46.4 April Pride, host: Well, it’s certainly crucial to acknowledge that some of us are packing our privilege alongside our pot, while others are walking with a target on them that results in arrest rates four times higher for Blacks than Whites for simple marijuana possession. When it comes to traveling with your weed, it is abundantly clear that one must take the precautions they are personally comfortable with. It is the federal illegality of cannabis that continues to make taking the plant on the road or in the skies a tricky conversation, one that doesn’t look any less biased or confusing anytime soon. But if you happen to already be a traveling toker, we hope you found the insights and pro-tips provided by our guides as something you can incorporate into your next travel session. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to tune in next week, when we unpack a few cautionary tales of weed travel gone wrong. While the truth can be a buzzkill sometimes, these stories are worth sharing.
0:12:41.7 April Pride, host: Thanks for listening to this episode of The High Guide. And join me, April Pride, every Friday at 1:00 PM Pacific, in Clubhouse, where we cover all things A to Z regarding plant-based pleasures. We hope you found our word of the week, chillum, inspiring enough to go out and find yourself one of them, as they are very awesome on-the-go pieces. You can always take a deeper dive into our glossary of terms on our website. And of course, you’ll find a new episode of The High Guide every Friday. Subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you’re looking to stay in closer contact, give us a follow on Instagram @thehigh.guide, and subscribe to our newsletter also @thehigh.guide. I’m April Pride, and I’m your host. We’ll see you next time, back here, at The High Guide.
