19 October 2009
A little noticed policy at two California airports allows properly qualified passengers to fly the friendly skies carrying up to a half pound of Marijuana, news agencies revealed Friday.
"The policy [at Oakland International Airport] is spelled out in a three-page document quietly enacted last year by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office," Mercury News reported. "It states that if deputies determine someone is a qualified patient or primary caregiver as defined by California law and has eight ounces or less of the drug, he or she can keep it and board the plane."
San Francisco International Airport shares the policy, CBS 5 in Oakland reported. But passengers travel with the drug "at their own risk," the agency added.
Sgt. J.D. Nelson with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office told Mercury News that officers and airport security will issue warnings to those bringing marijuana into areas where it is not legal, but do not call the passengers' destination to notify them of a traveler carrying the drug.
"We're certainly within our right to, but we never have," he said. "Our notification of the passengers [legal risk] is for their own safety and well-being."
In a state that has allowed medicinal marijuana for over a decade, the policy of these two airports is hardly surprising.
Newsweek, in a recent feature, declared Oakland, California to be America's "Potopia," highlighting a nine-block area of the city as "a model for what a legalized-drug America could look like."
"Nestled among what was once a rash of vacant storefronts, [is...] a kind of urban pot utopia, where everything moves just a little bit more slowly than the outside world. Among the businesses [...] are the Blue Sky Coffeeshop, a coffeehouse and pot dispensary where getting an actual cup of Joe takes 20 minutes but picking up a sack of Purple Kush wrapped neatly in a brown lunch bag takes about five. There's Lee's Bulldog Café, a student lounge with a not-so-secret back room where the haze-induced sounds of "Dark Side of the Moon" seep through thick smoke and a glass-blowing shop where bongs are the art of choice. Around the corner is a taco stand [...] that has benefited mightily from the university's hungry students."
The local institution of higher learning, referred to as Oaksterdam University, is like a mecca for marijuana enthusiasts, the magazine reported.
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