Indopedia All Things Marijuana
On Oct. 1, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) relaxed its rules for screening passengers traveling with medical cannabis.
In Canada, medical cannabis patients have been able to fly domestically with their medicine for some time now. However, one of the challenges in traveling with cannabis was the added time it took to get through security if medical marijuana was found.
Previously, if cannabis was discovered during baggage checks, the traveler was asked to present proper documentation and a police officer was summoned to examine everything. This added a significant amount of time to the boarding process. Adding to the issue, there has been a dramatic increase of medical marijuana patients in Canada in the last year.
“There was definitely exponential growth in the number of passengers traveling with medical marijuana,” said Mathieu Larocque, spokesperson for CATSA, in an interview with Marijuana.com. “We went from less than 150 [checks] five years ago, to 3,000 in the first part of this year.”
Larocque added that calling a police officer to evaluate the situation was always the protocol until the beginning of this month. “Prior to Oct….
