The Big Story: How do you answer this question at the U.S. border?

It’s a simple question, but the answer you provide could get you banned from entering the U.S. for life. Have you ever done drugs?

If you answer yes, you’re sent back the other way and told to not come back. If you answer no, you better be telling the truth.

What’s the right way to respond to this question? What happens when pot becomes legal in Canada in October? And what about people, like our own prime minister, who have publicly admitted to using drugs in the past?

In today’s ‘Big Story’ podcast, reporter Perrin Grauer (The Star Vancouver) takes us through the frustrating inconsistencies of this law, and shares some advice in case you ever find yourself put on the spot.

“Folks who are travelling into the United States from Canada may be asked a number of questions, one of which is ‘Have you ever used cannabis?’ Answering yes will land you with a lifetime ban from admission to the United States, which means if you are ever interested in making that journey again, you have to get a waiver. It costs you $500 or $600.”

Grauer points out it’s a temporary waiver and if you’re subject to it, you will have to go through this process for the rest of your life.

“It’s a surprise for a lot of Canadians, who are not criminalized here in their own country for it or are expecting cannabis to be legal soon to find that the U.S. has fairly different perspective on drug use.”

He notes this has been the policy for the past 15 years. “This isn’t new to this presidential administration.”

However, he says far more people have started to have this experience at the border. “The lawyer that I’d spoken to says 15 years ago, he was looking at one or two cases of this a year. Now, he’s seeing one or two cases of this per week.”

You can hear the full episode and subscribe to The Big Story podcast on iTunes or Google Play.

You can also hear it online at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

Not everybody will be asked about drug use at the border. Grauer says the criteria that lands you with this line of questioning isn’t clear.

“From what I can tell, it seems like there is some sort of profiling going on. Young people, folks who look like they may be snowboarders, for instance — I’ve been told — are more often taken aside and asked this line of questioning. Folks who look like they may have used cannabis — whatever that means, in the eyes of the officers. Speaking with the Customs and Border Protection Services’ media person, they say that they make determinations on who to ask based on information that they have available to them.”

Grauer says these days, the people who are deemed inadmissible are not only those who have admitted to a border officer to smoking weed.

“It’s folks who are involved in the cannabis industry. What we’re talking about here are not dispensary workers or folks who even necessarily grow cannabis, but people who make agricultural equipment that is eventually to be used in the cannabis industry. People who maybe have some soil blend that’s perfect for growing cannabis.”

He feels that suggests there is a directive that has changed in recent years.

What can you do if you are asked this question at the border?

If you are stopped at the border and asked if you have ever used pot, Grauer says you have the right to simply not answer the question.

“Even if they take you into secondary, which is where they pull you out of your car and haul you inside — a lot of these folks to whom that happens are in there for hours. They will tell you that you do have to answer these questions. But the fact is you don’t. The worst that can happen if you don’t answer that question — if you say, ‘I want to withdraw my request to enter the United States’ — is that they turn you around and send you home.”

He adds the border guards can put a note on your file, suggesting you should be asked more questions the next time you cross the line. “But there is no criminal consequence to saying, ‘I’m pleading the fifth. I’m not going to answer that.”

“The worst thing you can do is answer ‘yes’ because immediately will get you a lifetime ban. The problem is they can now look at your cell phone and computer. They can check you out on social media, if your profile is public. If there’s any indication that you have used cannabis and you answer ‘no,’ now you’ve lied to a federal officer. Lifetime ban.”

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