U.S. BORDER GUARDS WARN: OUR DRUG LAWS REMAIN THE SAME.

Canadians who admit to smoking marijuana only after the drug is legalized here may stand a better chance of getting into the U.S. than those who used pot when it was still a crime, American officials said Tuesday.

And people who work or invest in the legal cannabis industry here “could” be allowed into the U.S. — if they have no plans to ply their trade there, said senior managers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Those were among the messages in a telephone news conference that left one distinct impression: marijuana may be a legal product as of Wednesday in Canada, but it remains a live issue for those who guard America’s frontiers.

And it is an area where officers have “broad discretion” to allow entry or not.

Guards will be no more likely to ask about cannabis use than they were before, or in any way change their current policies, said Todd Owen, an executive assistant commissioner with the agency. However, Canadians should know “U.S. federal law has not changed in terms of marijuana,” he said. “It is still a controlled substance. You may be found inadmissible if you have ties into that.”

Those ties could include not only past brushes with the law over marijuana, but also a mere admission of having smoked a joint or two in the past, said Owen.

At the same time, the changing legal status of the practice in Canada may play into the guard’s decision, said Todd Hoffman, the agency’s executive director for admissibility.

“When they’re questioned by the officer and illegal drug use comes up, it could come down to pre-legalization, post-legalization and the officer will make the corresponding decision on admissibility based on that,” he said.

Hoffman qualified that statement a few moments later, saying the response to a Canadian’s post-legalization cannabis use might depend on whether the officer “believes (the traveller) may engage in the same activity while in the United States.”

The status of Canadians at the U.S. border has become one of the wild-card questions around legalization, with even the status of government-sanctioned cannabis employees and investors up in the air for a time.

Allan Rewak, executive director of the Cannabis Council of Canada, said Tuesday he knows of a few cases already where executives at legal Canadian marijuana companies have been handed lifetime bans when they tried to enter the U.S.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection tried to clarify that policy last week, issuing a statement that said Canadian industry participants who are not heading to the States for cannabis work would, in fact, be admitted. The directive was repeated Tuesday, though a little less definitively.

“If a Canadian is engaged in the legalized business in Canada, and they are coming to the United States for a different intent — they’re coming to go shopping or do some other recreational activity not associated with the industry — then they could be found admissible,” said Hoffman.

An investor does not mean someone who unknowingly has a cannabis company in their mutual fund or other financial portfolio, he added.