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Savvy shoppers finding good bargains in goods seized by airport security

As if having your eye drops and bottled water seized by airport security weren’t reason enough to be angry, yesterday’s Boston Globe points out another one: Many of your seized items are making their way into discount bins where savvy shoppers can buy jackknives, baseball bats, even surgical tools for just a dollar or two.

In this case, the article reports on goods recovered from Boston-area airports like Logan, Manchester, and Providence, which are collected by a federal agency—the General Services Administration—and shipped for resale to a farm in New Hampshire. The Globe story says discount resellers like this have “become a solution to a vexing side effect of post-9/11 crackdowns on potentially dangerous items in carry-on bags.”

It makes sense, after all. The seized items have to go somewhere. Also, one might ask why people are trying to bring jackknives, baseball bats, and surgical tools onboard in the first place.

Still, it’s hard not to get a little frustrated at the whole thing, given the current crackdown on everything from hand lotion to contact lens solution.

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