I don’t know many people who board airplanes carrying a lot of laser printer toners, but I know it happened to me once. I was on a contract in a different town, bought some office supplies for what I was doing there, and won a free cartridge in a promotion. I had no use for it there, so I took it home with me when my contract there ended, of course.

I’ve recently learned that this is no longer possible, as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now bans all transports that have “toner and ink cartridges over 16 ounces in both carry-on bags and checked bags”. I’m not sure how I feel about this measure; I mean, I’m all in favor of making plane trips safer for everyone, and I can understand how toners may pose a security risk as they can hide anything… but still, I can’t quite shake the feeling that there should be a better way to deal with this than banning the transports altogether.