This is not advice, just saying what I do and why I do it the way that I do. I suggest everyone find the law for the place they are going and read it. Then read all the comments from other and do what you want to do.
My philosophy is to travel as a guest. A good guest follows the house rules (PERIOD). I just don’t feel comfortable any other way. When the rules are vague, I think about intent and making the job easier for the authorities should there be a question. To do that I use what the norm is where there are written laws in countries in Europe. Italy is a good example. I also remember, that regardless of the law, if the guy at immigration wants to make my life difficult he can. Better I make his life easy and be respectful of a difficult job.
Not that it’s a competition but for my heart and other issues, I take 11 medications these days. One requires a syringe and needles, and alcohol wipes the rest are pills.
When I was still coming from the US, I learned to ask the pharmacist to put a month’s worth of each drug in a small bottle. That took care of how much room is in the luggage issue. The prescription is the label so that problem was solved, but I still carry a real prescription and a report from a visit to the cardiologist as I hope it would make getting replacements easier … and it did. With that the European doctor didn’t feel a need to do a lot of testing and just wrote the script. The three sheets of paper fit easily in my carryon next to the 11 small bottles and 4 syringes. I did the math, the meds in the bottles take up 22 square inches of my 1500 square inch WizzAir under seat bag. That 1.5% of the capacity of my personal item. I make that work.
I tend to be a bit conservative in how I handle my meds because I need them and living here I know that they aren’t always easy to replace. There is one med that I have to get in Germany and one that I have to get in Austria and I presume the odds of that sort of thing will be the same when I am visiting Italy or Romania so I really don’t want any issues resulting in the unnecessary loss of the medicine. It could end a trip before it gets started.
In researching the topic, I found reports of one country in Europe that has a reputation for confiscating meds. Never heard about it on a forum, but it’s bad enough that at least one other country is warning their citizens that if they go to have all their ducks lined up in a row. Then I have read about a few that for some reason stop antihistamines … its not always narcotics they have issues with. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I realize that I don’t know what I don’t know until it happens.
Bottles vs the European box. In daily use I detest the European blister pack boxes, but thats another subject. But this does bring to light something in many of the country’s laws; "keep in original container". Because over here everything comes in blister packs with the name of the medication on it, I assume that means identifying the drugs is important in the law. Well, you cant copy that with pill bottles because you can change what’s in the bottle, but at least with the bottle I am showing a good faith effort and maybe making someone job easier someday.
