Jacob Sullum on the Obsolescence of Pot-Sniffing Canines
What good is a marijuana-detecting dog when marijuana is legal?
Testifying before a House subcommittee last year, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration warned that marijuana legalization is bad for dogs. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart was talking about pets that inadvertently eat cannabis-infused snacks. But she could have been referring to marijuana-detecting police dogs, which face an uncertain future in jurisdictions where a whiff of pot is no longer evidence of a crime. As legalization takes effect in two more states this year, Jacob Sullum writes, police and prosecutors in Oregon and Alaska are confronting the same canine conundrum that their counterparts in Colorado and Washington have been dealing with since 2012: What good is a dog trained to find marijuana when marijuana is legal?