Originally Posted by chollie

Re-read the OP.

Supposedly, the courts have upheld that TSA can't actually search for drugs, but if they are looking at something else suspicious and just happen to run across drugs, they are required to summon LE.

So: supposedly the TSOs saw something that looked like a potential threat to aviation security in this bag (which is what they are supposed to be watching for). They pulled the bag to investigate this suspicious item(s) and just happened to find drugs that had to be reported to LE.

Question still remains: what potential threat to aviation safety caused them to pull the bag in the first place? Or was it just a random bag search? Did they see an object that looked like a grenade? a handgun?

Or did they see weed and pull the bag solely to investigate the weed?

FWIW, a truly random bag search would be a search of a bag flagged prior to the xray.