Nobody Fears Airport Security Anymore: Woman Arrested For Trying to Bring 59 POUNDS of Marijuana on a International Commercial Flight from Washington D.C. to Germany

ABC News – A Las Vegas woman was caught trying to smuggle marijuana worth nearly a quarter of a million dollars through Washington Dulles International Airport earlier this week, authorities said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers said they found more than 59 pounds of marijuana in the luggage of Aleshia Anne Pinheiro, 42, of Las Vegas, as she attempted to board a flight to Frankfurt, Germany.

Police arrested Pinheiro and charged her with transporting a controlled a substance into Virginia and possession with intent to distribute -- both felonies.

Authorities said they made the discovery Sunday when customs officers were checking bags going onto the Germany-bound flight. They found several sealed packages stuffed inside two hard suitcases, the CBP said in a news release.

After finding Pinheiro's name on the bags' tags, officers stopped her at the gate before she could board and took her to their inspection area for a closer look, the agency said.

People do not have a healthy fear of airports like they used to. I was 9-years old when my 4th grade teacher rolled out the TV for 9/11. It was in my formative years when airports became the focal point of National Security. Meaning I grew up thinking if I so much as left a tube of toothpaste in my backpack, it'd be off to Guantanamo Bay for me. To this day, I would still be apprehensive about bringing a weed pen on a flight. Even if it was from one recreational marijuana state to another. I managed to "smuggle" a few Xanax through TSA one time in my life, and my heart was in my throat. And the only reason I even had the courage to do that was because I'd already taken one of the Xanax. I was raised to never test your luck with airport security.

But the fear of airport security is gone. At least in some people. This is the second story I've seen in the last month of someone getting busted with an ABSURD amount of weed on an international commercial flight. Two separate instances of people who were confident that they could pass 50+ pounds of marijuana through U.S. Customs. The fucking audacity to think you're going to get away with that...

Now to be fair, the person in my first blog who got busted at the airport with 50 pounds of drugs was this guy…

So that kinda checks out. And I'm going to hazard a guess and say this second person who got popped, this time with 59 pounds of weed, wasn't the brightest bulb in the bunch either. She was attempting to bring 59 pounds of weed on a plane after all. But if two people have been busted trying it in the last month, there must be others who actually pulled it off.

I know you should never underestimate the stupidity of others, but both Vance Randolph and Aleshia Pinheiro must have had some reason to believe they could get away with it. Maybe they knew a friend who had done it before. Maybe a family member who works at the airport assured them, "We don't even check for weed like that anymore." 

Or it's possible they had success flying with a modest 20-30 pounds of marijuana, but just got a little bit too big for their britches on their latest run. Regardless of their reasoning, airport security sure doesn't seem to have the tough reputation that they used to.

Maybe 50 pounds is the magic number. U.S. Customs and TSA are so focused on guns, knives, and bombs, that drugs aren't even worth their time anymore. But if you're trying to get away with over 50 pounds… now you're trying to embarrass them. That's high-stepping over the goal line a little too much for them to roll over and take.

Although to be fair to U.S. Customs, they do seem to be seizing plenty of drugs on a daily basis.

Last year, U.S. Customs officers seized an average of 1,571 pounds of illegal drugs daily at airports, seaports and border crossings across the country, according to the CBP.

Still… I know they're not hitting at a 100% success rate.

P.S. Shoutout to whoever put a monetary value on this particular drug bust. For once, it seems like they were actually kinda fair with their "street price" valuation.

Officers found 50 sealed packages in the suitcases, according to the CBP. Tests showed the packages contained marijuana — about 59 pounds in total, according to the release. While the drugs were worth around $240,000 in the U.S., they could have sold for up to three times more in Europe, the CBP said.

I don't know exactly what 59 pounds of marijuana goes for on the American streets, but $240,000 (which would be a little over $9 a gram) is a much more fair estimate than you usually see. It's lightyears more reasonable than when that influencer got caught with 50 pounds of marijuana (plus other THC products), and had it valued at just under $3 million. When I wrote that blog, I drastically over-estimated the street prices (and rounded up) to try and make that number make sense. Even after doing that, I still couldn't get close to $3 million.