As we’ve reported numerous times, the TSA, despite its claims in public and on its website, routinely harasses passengers who have medical conditions and/or who are carrying prescription medicines.
In yet another story, a woman was traveling with her husband and children this week and had called ahead to both the airlines and the TSA to double-check the regulations governing travel with liquid medication, syringes, and the cooler in which they must be stored. She was told no problem.
But when she got to the checkpoint, surprise, surprise, there was a problem. As she had been instructed by the TSA over the phone before she left, she told the screeners at the checkpoint what she was carrying and requested that the medication not go through the x-ray machine. They told her to send it through.
(For those who are interested, the medication was Enbrel, which is prescribed for the often painful auto-immune disorder rheumatoid arthritis.)
Because she questioned this incorrect instruction and didn’t blindly acquiesce to the screeners’ authority, she was punished with a full-body pat-down. And they put the Enbrel through the x-ray anyway.
Then another TSA agent chastised her for letting the medication go through the x-ray.
Clearly, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.
As we’ve seen over and over again, the screeners at the checkpoint don’t know or don’t follow their own regulations. They mis-identify medical equipment, they wreck medical equipment, they abuse disabled passengers.
But people are still flying, and they’re still flying with their children. So I guess the abuse isn’t bad enough, because they’re still willing to put up with it.
(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Shannon Yeh)