Hi all,
So… I’m going to Minnesota at the end of this month (Yay state fair!), and I’m trying to keep the packing down as much as possible. I realized that keeping my meds in their original bottles takes up a ridiculous amount of space. Is it really necessary to have them in the original bottles (to prove that you’re not smuggling drugs, or something?) Would it actually be a problem to take them out and put them in one plastic bag? Are there any other space saving options? All advice appreciated…
It would depend on the meds. Blood pressure or diabetic, the police most likely won’t care.
Things like narcotics, sedatives and such, you really want to be able to prove you have an Rx.
Even with the “non-abusable” drugs, you still need the bottle to identify the pills.
You could put the pills in an organizer of some sort and have separate bag for the bottles.
The TSA doesn’t give a fat rat’s ass about drugs. Their only function is to divert anything that poses a threat to the aircraft or its passengers. Narcotics enforcement is another department entirely. My sister worked as a TSA supervisor for about three years at DFW. During that entire time she only witnessed one instance of drug interdiction, and that involved somebody having their medical marijuana confiscated. That being said though, state laws usually require people to carry prescription meds in the bottles in which they were dispensed, so it’s a prudent idea any time you leave the house, not just when going through airport screening. If somebody does kick up a fuss over it, it’s not worth missing your flight simply for the sake of consolidating a little luggage space. And for God’s sake, never put drugs in your checked baggage. TSA agents by and large aren’t spawned from the deep end of the gene pool; those numbnuts can and will steal anything that isn’t nailed down. I’ve always been tempted to encapsulate some methylene blue and put the caps in an empty oxycontin bottle and watch all manner of frivolity ensue.
It’s a must when traveling internationally, but is it really much of an issue flying domestically?
I’m reminded of George Carlin:
I’ll take my vitamin. Do you take vitamins? Did you ever travel with vitamins? Oh, well… if you take a lot of vitamins, and they’re not the kind that says “Joe’s Vitamins” on the side – the plain-looking vitamins – and you have a whole lot, and you don’t the whole big jumbo thing on the road, you take as many as you need – and they’re not marked. And the jar you put them in isn’t marked. If a policeman really wants to give you a hard time, he can hold you overnight while they check the vitamins. That’s why I travel with Flintstone vitamins!
I think I knew it couldn’t be that simple… :rolleyes: What about carrying actual copies of the prescription labels on the side of the bottles? No?
I have flown many times domestically and internationally with all manner of pills, prescription and not, some opiates, in pill organizers, miscellaneous bottles, and occasionally even the original pill bottles. Security does not give two shits. It’s all about bombs and hijacking. God forbid you bring a 4oz bottle of some liquid, but pills, no way you’ll be bothered.
Maybe if you had like 2000 in a plastic baggie, you’d draw some attention. Normal person with normal amounts? Let your freak flag fly.
ETA: Unless you’ve got an Arabic name. Then I’d do everything to the letter.
The TSA may not care but if you are stopped by the police in many states with prescription medication and no label you could be charged with some crime. If you have a prescription I’d assume nothing would come of it in the end but it could be a bug annoyance to begin with, and there’d have to be some other reason you were stopped to allow the police to search you (in theory).
This. I got paranoid went I went to France and kept my speed and ludes (Ritalin and Klonazapam) in their bottles, among a pharmacopeia of other pills, but realized it was silly, since who knows what pills look like anyway at their end?
Exactly—TSA has a hard enough time recruiting people who can even stand up straight and speak in complete sentences. They made my sister a supervisor after only three weeks on the job because she was the only person they could find who was a college graduate. You’re not going to find any budding pharmacists among the ranks of those monkeys who rummage through your underwear. They don’t even open the bottles and look in; the most they’ll ever do with prescription drugs is swab the outside of the bottle.
I have to take a handful of pills each day, and when I travel (including internationally) I organize them by date, with each day’s worth in part of a baggie. No containers, no labels, just pills in baggies. I also keep a duplicate set in my carry-on. I’ve never had a problem.
My wife and I have flown all over the world with meds in unmarked daily cases and never had one problem with it.
My wife does much the same thing, but she also carries a copy of her prescriptions. We have flown and sailed to a good many countries (but not the US) without anyone even noticing.
I prefer to be safe rather than sorry when traveling international. On domestic flights, Customs doesn’t inspect your bags to see what you’re bringing in. Unmarked meds could be a potential problem at an international airport.
I would carry a prescription (ask your Doctor for one, they are quite accustomed to writing scripts for travellers, and some will add stuff “just in case”), not just for dealing with authorities, but also for medical emergencies and also for the senario of misplacing them, so you can go and purchase more locally.
I fly internationally all the time (well, between Canada and the US and Canada and Barbados) and only once have I been questioned about drugs. That was on a train from Vancouver to Seattle, not even a plane. The idiot customs inspector had got it into his microcephaloid somehow that it was illegal to bring drugs into the US even with a prescription. He explained this to the guy in front of me on the train and so I simply lied when he asked if I had any drugs with me.
It has been at least 50 years since I had a piece of luggage examined at customs. Once I asked a custom’s officer about that (I was clearing some air freight that had not accompanied us on our trip back from Europe) and he said, “Oh, I have X-ray vision.” Honestly that what he answered me. I did used to carry the prescriptions with me, but they wore out.
The last time I had a piece of luggage inspected was last year in Singapore. At various times, I’ve had my bags inspected in Japan and here in Thailand. So it could conceivably crop up as an issue. I just feel better having the meds properly labeled.
There might be a description on the Rx label. And there are websites to ID pills.
Oh, I forgot to add that it was during my bag inspection in Japan (arriving in Osaka from Bangkok in 1996) that the Customs officer started questioning me about my generic aspirin I kept in a plastic camera-film container. That’s the point where I started carrying my meds clearly labeled.