Cops threaten to kill their dogs if marijuana is legalized

There are good arguments to be made for and against legalizing dope and narcotics in general, but this isn't one of them.

If Illinois legalizes recreational marijuana by ballot measure this November, police may have to "put down" many of the 275 K-9 dogs trained to recognize narcotic substances across the state. Police organizations oppose legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and some marijuana advocates have condemned them for dangling canine death as a political tool.

Police agencies invest thousands of dollars and months of training to teach dogs to sniff out and alert officers to the presence of various illegal narcotics, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs. These dogs, affectionately known as K-9 units, are very specialized, and police insist that it would be "cruel" to retrain them.

If the state legalizes marijuana, "the biggest thing for law enforcement is, you're going to have to replace all of your dogs," Macon County Sheriff Howard Buffett told The Pantagraph. His private foundation paid $2.2 million in 2016 to support K-9 units in 33 Illinois counties. "So to me, it's a giant step forward for drug dealers, and it's a giant step backwards for law enforcements and the residents of the community."

States that have already legalized marijuana have taken various approaches to the K-9 issue. Officers in Washington state have attempted to retrain their animals to ignore marijuana, and trained new police dogs to smell all narcotics besides pot. In other states, agencies have kept pot-sniffing dogs and continued to search for large amounts of the drug not allowed under the law.

Chad Larner, training director of the K-9 Training Academy in Macon County, told The Pantagraph that retraining dogs would amount to "extreme abuse." K-9s are rewarded for successfully identifying the presence of narcotics, and they continue to train regularly with their handlers for a suggested minimum of 16 hours per month. Larner insisted that there is no guarantee the dogs could be broken of their original training.

"We do not want to subject innocent citizens or motorists who travel through Illinois ... to unlawful search and seizures," the director explained. He estimated there are about 275 certified narcotic-detecting K-9s in the state, and that most of them are dual-purpose, trained to find drugs and to track and apprehend suspects and missing persons.

Assistant Police Chief Steve Petrilli of the Normal Police Department told The Pantagraph it would be impossible to teach the dogs to ignore odors they have been trained for years to recognize. Replacing all the dogs would cost millions.

Tragically, Larner said many K-9s are trained not to be social. They have been trained for these specific purposes, and so if marijuana were to be legalized, a large number of police dogs would have to be euthanized.

Criminals aren't the only morons wandering the planet.