California Resident Made it Through Customs with Cannabis

California Resident Made it Through Customs with Cannabis

Traveling with cannabis is one issue that all medical marijuana patients will face if they ever go on vacation or have to travel for business. Just because you leave your home state or home country doesn’t mean that whatever symptoms or ailments that you utilize medical marijuana for stays back home. Medical marijuana patients deserve the right to be able to travel with their medication just as people are able to openly travel with their deadly, addictive, and harmful pharmaceuticals.
Thanks to what is being called a loophole in New Zealand law, visitors to the country as well as residents are able to travel freely into the country with any medication that they are prescribed. This also includes cannabis for those with documented recommendations.
Just recently a California resident by the name of Rebecca Reider was able to travel through customs in New Zealand with her medical marijuana, after previously being charged with illegal importation of marijuana into the country. The law only allows for visitors to have a one-month supply of medication with them so Rebecca was able to clear customs with one ounce of cannabis total.
Rebecca had previously been charged with trying to enter the country with cannabis but won the case in a Nelson District Court after Judge Peter Hobbs ruled that the consequences of the conviction were not in line with the severity of the crime according to the Sentencing Act.  Sue Grey was the representing attorney for Rebecca and stated;

“There was no good reason to criminal sanction a person who was using prescribed pain relief for good reason.”

As you can imagine after all of this, Rebecca was very excited when she was able to successfully travel and enter into the country recently.  Rebecca is not the only one celebrating either. Recent polls show that 82% of the citizens in New Zealand feel that cannabis should be legal for combatting terminal pain and 64% believe that possession and consumption of small amounts should be legalized or at least decriminalized. Looks like New Zealand feels the same way as the rest of the world when it comes to the draconian laws surrounding cannabis. Recent polls since 2014 show that over 50% of Americans also support marijuana legalization.
Whether or not a patient can travel with their medicine should not even be a question or concern. If someone utilizes a medicine whether it is chemical or plant based there should be no laws that prevent them from accessing said medicine. Plain and simple.
image credit: Druglawed/Facebook