Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire – Cannabis Users, Investors Face Border Issues

Canadians are routinely being stopped at U.S. customs and asked about their usage of or involvement with marijuana. And some who have admitted smoking weed in the past or who are dealing with legal cannabis production in even a peripheral fashion are being refused entry to the United States.

It’s a situation that Canadian travel agents should keep in mind as they book flights or other trips to the U.S. for their clients. There is certainly no liability on the agent, however given an agents role to advise and inform. It certainly wouldn’t hurt for agents to advise clients of the situation.

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One Cannabis insider told TravelPulse Canada that some Bay street brokers have cancelled major investment orders for clients into US based Cannabis IPOs’ in order to avoid potential exposure at the US border.

A story on the CBC’s website last week stated that “U.S. immigration lawyers are already warning Canadians that they could be denied entry to the U.S. — or barred from the United States for life — if they admit to smoking cannabis to a border agent. The drug is still a prohibited substance under U.S. federal law, despite legalization in some U.S. states.”

A recent story in the Toronto Star noted that Canadians heading into Washington State are having border issues, even though cannabis is legal inside state borders.

The trouble, the Star said, is that marijuana, along with cocaine, heroin and other drugs, are considered a “Schedule One substance” under U.S. laws. Any “past or current association with the drug is considered a federal crime in the U.S.”

The story said a B.C. based equipment manufacturer, Jay Evans of Keirton Inc., has been barred from entering the U.S. because some of the machines his company makes are used in the cannabis business.

A Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs press officer for the U.S. State Department told The Star via email that “admission requirements into the United States will not change due to Canada’s legalization of cannabis.”

CBS News in the U.S. reports that Vancouver’s Sam Znaimer, a venture capitalist, was recently deemed inadmissible to the U.S. because he invested in legal U.S. cannabis companies.

"I was shocked,” Znaimer told the network. “I couldn't believe that anyone as peripherally involved with these companies as an investor could possibly be deemed to be assisting and abetting. It is a huge regulatory overreach," Znaimer said.

Saunders told CBS News that, to U.S. border guards, marijuana is the same as cocaine or heroin.

“You're being barred because you're getting paid through drug money, even though it's marijuana," Saunders said. "It might as well be cocaine or heroin.

“These are not people who have criminal convictions, these are not people who are terrorists or a threat to the United States.”

Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., told the Star there’s a “new wave of intensity” from U.S. customs and border officials, part of what Tree called an increasingly “draconian” attitude under the current American administration.

Tree said border guards have the right to search travellers’ electronic devices and download their content, and that they also are now searching social media to see who might be involved – even directly – in the drug trade.

Advice? Be cautious, and prepare how you might respond.