Somehow I don’t think you’ll have a problem smuggling dental floss. Even if you have a large amount you’re unlikely to have enough $ value to be an issue. Further, you’re much more likely to have your bags searched returning to the US (that’s almost 100% for at least opening up one bag) than arriving in France — You can probably go through “nothing to declare” and not ever have a bag opened.

for the record, I’ve never gotten searched entering another country or coming home. I guess I look really innocent and not like I would sneak a bottle of booze back (done) or rare seashells (done) or whatever.
BTW, France in particular seems really lenient letting people in, at least Americans anyway. They barely even looked at my customs card… they were basically just like, bonjour welcome to france now GTFO my line I’m busy.

As long as yoyu don’t make a joke about tying the pilot up with dental floss you should be okay

Ha! I’ll try to keep my mouth in check. Although, that seems to be getting more and more difficult as I get older.

Indeed, If you have bad luck and a terrorist uses the dental floss trick a week before you take off, you might get into problems!

How about taking the floss out of the container, put it all in a condom, and shove it (well you know where). Woudln’t that be a great gift for your friend?

I think that’d make for an awfully uncomfortable flight over. I think I’ll risk carrying it in my bag and just hope a terrorist doesn’t try to set a dental floss bomb off or decapitate anyone before I leave.

It’s because you were holding a US passport. They’re lenient with Americans. If you had a Haitian passport, they’d be very stringent.

yeah, but moomagoo is American too so she shouldn’t have a problem either.
But really, the French attitude at the airport was just like, “I’m too busy to deal with Americans… and they’re too dumb and paranoid to try anything really stupid anyway so whatever waves through“

There’s a difference between passport control (or what in the US is called “immigration”), and customs. Passport control/immigration is where they check your passport (and visa, if applicable), to check your eligibility to enter the country. Customs is where they [in theory] monitor what you bring into the country, although customs has become more and more lax on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1980s, when they actually used to search everyone’s luggage. In North America (USA/Canada/Mexico), this has been drastically reduced to a simple declarations form (and only for people arriving by air), and the possibility that you may get randomly selected. I have yet to be selected, and I’d love to hear from someone that actually has. In Europe, they don’t even do that, at least not to my awareness. France has a declarations form 100 times simpler than the American/Canadian/Mexican ones, and other European countries that I know of, don’t even have a declarations form (I usually enter the Schengen area through Germany, France, Italy, or Greece). Maybe they do it on the back end now? Do they xray luggage before sending it off to baggage claim?

No, it’s more of a “Americans are highly unlikely to move here illegally. Just wave them through.”