US News

Colorado tourists abandoning pot stashes in rental cars

Nervous tourists leaving Colorado after purchasing a little too much legal marijuana have been abandoning their leftover stashes inside their rental cars at Denver International Airport.

At nearly every rental car agency near the airport, employees said that cars are frequently being returned with baggies of weed because visitors are worried about airport security finding their reefer, CBS News reports.

“It happens quite often,” a rental car employee told CBS. “Every couple of days. I just throw it in the trash.”

“More during the weekends,” said a worker from another major national rental chain. “Probably like four times a day. Me, I just throw it away. I don’t know about the others.”

Small amounts of marijuana are legal to possess in Colorado, but taking the buds into the airport or transporting them across the state border could land a person in hot water.

“It’s illegal for you to take it across state lines and since we are an airport, we’re not going to facilitate the transportation of marijuana illegally,” said Stacey Stegman, spokesperson for DIA.

Signs posted all around the airport warn visitors to leave the pot at home or face a hefty fine up to $999.

But Stegman assured pot tourists not to freak out just yet.

“Ideally, we just want people to throw it away,” she said. “We don’t want to have to issue a citation, we don’t want anyone to get in trouble, we just want them to discard it peacefully and carry on their trip.”

Since January, DIA authorities have caught 16 people attempting to smuggle their legal herbs through security checkpoints, according to Stegman.

Instead of punishing the travelers with a citation, though, the airport has been forcing them to toss their marijuana in the trash instead.

As a result, herb holders have been choosing to leave their buds inside their rental cars before entering DIA, sometimes even attempting to “tip” employees with their skunky stash.

Employees will usually trash the pot, or turn it over to their supervisors, according to a worker at another national rental car company. But not before making sure it stays out of the hands of their stoner co-workers.

“We try not to let it get to the car wash bay because those guys will take it,” the worker said.