In The TSA’s Defense, Sometimes A Traveler’s Depend Is Filled With Heroin

While nobody wants their grandma to undergo a Depend check at the hands of Transportation Security Administration screeners, the use of adult diapers to smuggle contraband on airplanes in not an uncommon occurrence.

Last month, for example, a woman arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was subjected to a “partial strip search” after a pat-down search “revealed a hard object in the defendant’s groin area.”

That secondary search revealed that the traveler was wearing a diaper covered by black spandex. The diaper, according to Homeland Security agents, contained 71 heroin pellets, while 33 more pellets were found in the woman’s groin area. The suspect had also ingested 16 other heroin pellets, which she later passed.

The recent search of a 95-year-old woman at a Florida airport came after TSA screeners felt something hard on her leg and could not determine what it was, according to the woman’s daughter, who added that agents told her the diaper was "wet and it was firm, and they couldn't check it thoroughly.”