TSA releases list of top 10 'unusual finds' air travelers tried to sneak through security

A LaGuardia Airport passenger who wore an adult diaper with concealed marijuana to hide the stash from security screeners — and her own mother — was number two on the Transportation Security Administration’s “Top 10 list of most unusual finds at checkpoints in 2023,” released Tuesday.

A TSA worker found the item after the traveler passed through a detector and was patted down, the agency said this week in a news release.

New York State in 2021 legalized possessing up to small amounts of marijuana, but when the TSA finds the drug — or other contraband — the police are summoned.

“TSA is not looking for drugs, but if we come across it during routine screening, we contact the police and it’s up to the police how it is handled. Bottom line: TSA does not confiscate marijuana or any other drugs that we may come across,” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein wrote in an email.

The marijuana-containing diaper was among 10 items listed in a 2 minute and 13 second video posted Tuesday morning by the TSA on X, formerly Twitter.

Starting at #10, the items included: naruto throwing knives in a carry-on bag (at Boston’s Logan airport); replica rockets in checked luggage (Minneapolis-St. Paul); a knife in bread (Seattle-Tacoma); meth crab boil (New Orleans’ Armstrong); a 35 mm projectile (Charlotte Douglas in North Carolina); a knife in a prosthetic limb (Anchorage, Alaska); a firearm with 163 bullets (New Orleans); an explosive cartridge (Sacramento); the marijuana in the diaper and, at #1, a bang can (an improvised explosive device, at Tulsa).

In the case of the diapered woman at LaGuardia, she was not arrested or charged, because the amount she had was legal, according to Seth Stein, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the region’s airports.

“But,” the TSA wrote in a news release, “you can bet that the mother won’t soon let her daughter off the hook!”
The woman's name wasn't disclosed, nor was her destination, and while the exact date wasn't either, the agency had previously tweeted about the incident in October.

Asked what happened to the marijuana — did the woman get to keep it? did she have to surrender it in order to fly? was it thrown out? — Farbstein didn’t return a voicemail. 

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.