Proof the TSA is looking for drugs
 

I know someone who had a set of nesting suitcases that she had obtained from someone else, who it later turned out to be a kinda shady character.

She flew several times domestically, checking one of the smaller suitcases of the set. Every single time she flew, she got the TSA love letter, and her bag was hand-searched.

One day, she got out the biggest outer suitcase, and out fell a small capsule filled with cocaine, compliments of the previous owner. Upon seeing this capsule and realizing that the smell must have permeated all the suitcases in the nesting set, she ripped her name off the suitcases, took them to a skip far from her house, and threw them all out along with the cocaine, never to be seen or traced back to her.

This, however, is proof of something: on domestic flights, the TSA is using electronic sniffers or drug dogs, and are looking for drugs in checked bags.

Good thing. Presuming your friend means in the USA by "domestic" it's against the law here. All for catching druggies.

If they were, why did they never find the drugs?

I have no problem with catching druggies, but that's not. the. TSA's. job.

WEI.

Nothing more.

They've already had their mission creep go way too far, they're not the DEA.

See, this is why the so called "administrative" search standard is a joke. It is well known that the DEA has drug dogs sniffing around airport luggage and domestic cargo holds. I don't think it is much of a stretch that if the dog hits on something that the DEA fetches a TSA agents, asks them to do a "random" check on the bag, then if something is found they hand the bag over to the DEA.

I think what a lot of folks may not realize is that most of the dogs we see in airports are not trained in explosives, but K9s trained in drugs and tracking that have been deployed by local law enforcement to the airport to continue the security theater show...who cares if the dog can't detect explosives the show must go on!

I know in Ohio at one point they only had two explosives dogs in the whole state! But you'd see drug dogs at the airport to appear to be working.

The cocaine was hidden in the largest suitcase of the nesting set. She always used one of the smaller inner-nested suitcases to fly, so the cocaine itself stayed in her house. Ergo, the suitcase she checked never had any drugs in it, but any drug dog would have smelled drugs, as traces of the smell permeated through to all the suitcases in the set.

Your definition of proof is very different than mine.

castro

DEA agents don't spend any time worried about small time drug users. Even local cops don't expend much effort on users. Sure when someone is dumb enough to get caught at a checkpoint they will respond. There simply isn't the resources or the will to focus on anything but the big cases.

castro

No, not small time drug users, but small time traffickers. This is not speculation on my part. Someone was caught out of my local airport last year when a DEA dog picked up on a package coming through the cargo area. They found several pounds of coke in the box. They sealed up the package like new, sent the package on its way, and had a stake out team waiting at the delivery address.

They weren't--what she ended up finding was in the *OUTER* suitcase. She traveled with the *INNER* one--which kept being exposed to the bit of drugs in the outer one every time she put it away.

This doesn't prove it's drugs, though, there could have been something else that caused the TSA love note.

Small fry are useful for going after the bigger ones.

I had a similar scare once--bought a used car from the boyfriend of a friend, who likewise turned out to be a bit shady. A few months after I bought it, I lost a bracelet down the back of the back seat, and fumbling around for it found three marijuana cigarettes. My blood ran cold when I realized that I'd taken the car to Canada earlier...gave the car a right proper spring cleaning after that!

While I agree that mahohmei's story is not definitive proof, either legally or scientifically, it is certainly an extremely convincing piece of evidence.

This could lead to a very interesting experiment - pick ten pieces of identical luggage and expose five of them to drugs. Give them at random to 10 frequent fliers and see how many of them are hand searched, and how often. Exchange them constantly so that each traveler gets each bag once, thus eliminating the possibility of the contents causing the search rather than the bag itself.

Personally, I'd be willing to bet that the 5 that are exposed to drugs will be searched at a much higher rate than the 5 that are not. Because I believe that the dogs in the airport are, indeed, drug sniffers and not bomb sniffers.

In a related issue, I'm very curious to know whether the swabs taken at the checkpoint from travelers' persons or possessions are also chemically tested for drugs, as well as nitrates.

My thoughts exactly.