Las Vegas airport offers latest amenity: boxes to dump weed

Passengers at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas may now use green “amnesty boxes” to dispose of any marijuana they might have on them before boarding their flights. Passengers at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas may now use green “amnesty boxes” to dispose of any marijuana they might have on them before boarding their flights. Photo: Regina Garcia Cano, Associated Press Photo: Regina Garcia Cano, Associated Press Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Las Vegas airport offers latest amenity: boxes to dump weed 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

LAS VEGAS — Check your bags, dump the weed.

McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas is offering travelers a chance to dispose of any marijuana they might have on them before hopping onto a flight. The “amnesty boxes” have been installed at the airport and soon will be located at smaller airports in North Las Vegas and Henderson — 20 dope boxes in all.

More than half are already in place at various passenger drop-off sites and airport car rental sites.

Christine Crews, spokeswoman for McCarran, said the boxes were installed after the Clark County Commission voted last year to ban marijuana possession on airport property to keep the facility in line with federal law.

Possession of marijuana for recreational use was legalized by Nevada voters in 2016 and took effect Jan. 1, 2017, despite the drug still being classified as illegal under federal law. Nevada and seven other states along with Washington, D.C., currently allow marijuana to be sold for recreational consumption.

Las Vegas isn’t the first airport to offer amnesty buckets for travelers to dispose of their weed. After Colorado legalized recreational marijuana six years ago, the Colorado Springs Airport set up amnesty boxes for people to dump their marijuana before takeoff.

But the state’s largest airport, Denver International, chose not to adopt such a plan, spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said in an email.

“We’ve had very few instances of people coming to a checkpoint with MJ (marijuana). If they do, they are asked to discard it and the police confiscate it,” she said. “No one has been in trouble for this. Also, we’ve not had problems with discarded MJ. All has gone well.”

The legalization of marijuana in a patchwork of states is forcing industries and government to grapple with a product that is bought, sold and consumed in a legal gray zone. Banking regulations, which fall under federal law, have made legal marijuana businesses largely cash-run enterprises. And, while it’s legal to possess and consume on private property, it remains illegal to smoke pot in public.

Airports are just the latest venue to adapt to the new laws and a more mellow view by the public about marijuana consumption.

Crews said the amnesty boxes are a convenient way for people to comply with the airport’s ordinance that prohibits pot on site. The boxes are also designed to prevent people from trying to reach in and remove disposed drugs.

California, which has also legalized recreational marijuana use, has several international airports and officials at the Los Angeles World Airports and San Francisco International Airport said they didn’t have the boxes.