Forty-three-year-old L.A. resident Adam Blumenkranz was arrested on Monday after he was caught smoking marijuana in a JetBlue bathroom during a flight from Orlando to Newark. Blumenkranz apparently couldn't wait to get his toke on, slipping into the lavatory with his pipe during the flight's descent, while arousing the suspicion of flight attendants by sloppily dropping a clear plastic bag in the cabin.
When attendants got a whiff of Blumenkranz after he emerged from the loo, there was no doubt that the "strong smell of marijuana" was present. Police with their "Dude, really?" faces were waiting for Blumenkranz at the terminal gate in New Jersey, where they took him into custody.
Blumenkranz maintained he was innocent because he had a medical marijuana card, and showed police his glass pipe and bag of ganj. Unfortunately for Blumenkranz, though pot is legal in sixteen states, air travel falls under federal jurisdiction, so he should have waited the extra ten minutes or whatever. (Ignorance of the law is no defense.)
Blumenkranz (who, judging by the photo, had a very pleasant mug-shot experience), was banged for possession of less than fifty grams of a controlled dangerous substance, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia, and later released. As Port Authority Police spokesman Al Della Fave (in a Captain Obvious-type statement) put it, "You just can't do that on a commercial airliner. You cannot smoke anything, regardless what the issue is."
