The usual advice when traveling with prescription medicine is to bring it in the original packaging. I'm wondering exactly how strictly that is enforced.
The medicine I take come in big cardboard boxes which contain blister cards that hold 3 months worth of pills together. Taking that entire thing would waste scarce backpack space, and would also amount to bringing much more drugs than I need for my trip, which is also generally advised against.
So what I'm doing is that I bring enough blister cards to get me through the vacation, in a plastic bag, and then I have the empty cardboard boxes (with personalized pharmacy labels on them) folded flat at the bottom of my luggage.
This has not caused me any problems, for the trivial reason that I've never had my bags inspected by customs anyway. However, if I were to be picked out for a random customs inspection, would it create any problems that the original packaging I bring doesn't actually physically surround the pills, as first viewed by the inspector? Anyone have concrete experience with this?
[I'm not asking about any particular destination; most guidance I've found about particular countries are at the same level of generality, so presumably there are not wildly different interpretations of "in original packaging" among countries that require that].