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Drug-Sniffing Dogs Retire Early Amid Legalized Cannabis

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]D[/dropcap]ozens of drug-sniffing dogs across the United States and Canada are retiring, because their skills at detecting cannabis are no longer needed in areas with legal cannabis. The dogs can’t be un-trained to sniff out cannabis—but fortunately, most dogs retire as pets and are adopted by their handlers.

Following the first day of recreational cannabis sales in Canada on Oct. 17 and the recent Nov. 6 election, cannabis is legal in more areas of North America, rendering the dogs useless. Last month, 14 Canadian narcotics dogs were forced into early retirement, and replacement dogs are favored if they have no reaction to cannabis. Workers from Top Dog Police K-9 Training and Consulting in Modesto, California say they are getting more requests to omit cannabis from the dogs’ drug detection training.

Tulo, a yellow Labrador retriever serving on the Rifle Police Department in Colorado, will retire early in January, because his skills in detecting cannabis odor are no longer needed.

“A dog can’t tell you, ‘Hey, I smell marijuana’ or ‘I smell meth,’” Tommy Klein, Rifle’s police chief told The New York Times. “They have the same behavior for any drug that they’ve been trained on. If Tulo were to alert on a car, we no longer have probable cause for a search based on his alert alone.” Tulo will be replaced by dogs named Makai and Jax, who haven’t been trained to detect cannabis.

Dogs must sniff out the correct drug, lest the case be thrown out by a judge. One such incident took place in 2015 in Denver, Colorado. A police dog named Kilo sniffed out a pipe with traces of methamphetamine. But because it wasn’t clear if the dog sniffed out cannabis or meth, the judge ruled that the case must be overturned, and it now heads to the Colorado Supreme Court.

But the dogs’ future isn’t as bad as it appears. Last May, Police Chief Jim Getz of Decatur, Illinois, was forced to retract his statement after suggesting that legal cannabis is forcing police to euthanize their drug detection dogs. In reality, most dogs will be adopted by their dog handlers.

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