FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

LONDON - SMUGGLING WEED IS EASY

As a follow-up to yesterday's look at the sorry state of airport security we asked our friend Rockwell how he always manages to have weed on him whenever he gets off a plane.
Every time I travel by plane to another country I always have weed on me. Gothenburg, Dublin, Barcelona, Malaga, Edinburgh and Narita, Japan. I don't mean like kilos of the shit, but enough to know that I won't ever have to go a day without weed in a foreign country. The only two places I've not smuggled weed into are JFK and Bangkok. JFK because I was there on work and knew I could get weed in NY and Bangkok because I didn't want my hands chopped off or whatever. Oh wait, that's a lie. I did bring some weed to Bangkok, I think, but just a little.

Advertisement

Aside from the comfort of having weed at your destination I guess there is also a bit of a rush going through security with up to half an ounce tightly taped to the inside of your boxers. The trick is to compress the weed as much as possible, wrap it in cling film, spray with deodorant or aftershave, wrap again, spray again, then wrap in tape tightly, (preferably masking tape since doesn't really rustle or have any sharp edges). Once it's well cocooned, tape it to the inside of your boxers about an inch down from the middle of the waistline. That way when you put your jeans on it's kind of below your belt buckle and above your dick. That's a total no-go zone for customs officers.

Make sure you have a belt that doesn't set off the metal detector. Unfortunately there's no surefire way of knowing since some do and others mysteriously don't, but you can use your head. A belt made of hay is less likely than one made of bullets. What you don't want is to be body-searched, because despite your planning, all those years of smoking will conjure a paranoid, phantasmagorical cloud of dope around you and you'll get convinced you're going to prison for life. Try not to freak out. The only way they'll find it is if you get strip-searched. Once a guy ran his fingers around the top of my belt and I swear I felt his fingers buckle on the top of the package but then he waved me through. I said then I'd never do it again, but hey.

So far I have no smuggling regrets, but in retrospect I think traveling to Tokyo with three different strains of weed might have been a bit of a risk. I didn't have much, maybe three or so grams, but I had saved this shit especially for Japan. I was there for the World Cup and I wanted to be there. Like on the bench. Anyway, I got through Dublin fine and Paris as well. About four or five hours of restlessness into the flight though I had an anxiety attack and was like, "What the fuck am I doing?!? This is Japan! McCartney only got off on a pardon from the government or something!" So I went to the jacks to flush it: "It's only a bit of weed, I'm with my dad, and if he finds out he'll fucking flip out." I paused Ali or whatever I was watching, went to the toilet, dropped my boxers, and was like, "Hold on a sec, this is a bad move." I then spent about ten minutes talking myself in and out of doing it. Finally I just said to myself, "Fuck it. Fuck them if they can't take a joke'.

This next bit I remember clear as if it happened yesterday. We went through customs and got our passports stamped. Before leaving we had our baggage checked. That's cool, right? Cause it's in my boxers. But they had it very well choreographed. There were about eight checkpoints, each one had an inspector and, behind him, a guy on the door who looked like something out of the fucking A-Team. His role was to detect any odd behavior from people holding illegal substances, like me. My dad was just ahead of me, but by this point I was fucking retarded; tired, disorientated, and now a bit prang. My dad turns to me and says, "Hey, you got any contraband on you?" I'm like, "Er, yep, you?" He turns to me and says, "Sure."  We got to the front of the queue, the guy looked at us, and then he pulled out this massive flashcard. It was covered in all types of gnarly mushrooms. "Got any of these in you luggage?" he asked, and I almost fucking wet myself while shaking my head. They looked in our bags and off we went, weed in my boxers and hash in my dad's Johnny-pocket. It was a heart-warming moment.

Recently though I've been more reluctant about taking a lot of weed with me as there are sniffer dogs at some airports. I'll always have that cheeky gram or two hidden away. Really, taking personal amounts of weed through customs is fine if you know what you're doing. Just don't try bringing back 100 grams from Amsterdam in your luggage—even if it is vacuum packed.

ROCKWELL