
The Difficulty of Untraining Drug Dogs How to Smell Marijuana - matt4077
https://melmagazine.com/can-an-old-drug-dog-learn-new-tricks-like-how-not-to-smell-marijuana-in-states-where-its-legal-5f8293233187
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aphextron
>What are we going to do about all of the victims of the Drug War sitting in
jail while weed entrepreneurs make bank amid the Green Rush?

This is one of the particularly nasty bits of hypocrisy our society has
allowed to flourish over the past decade. We now have a situation where
(almost exclusively rich white men) are making millions of dollars selling
legal marijuana on an industrial scale, as red state prisons sit full of petty
dime bag dealers (overwhelmingly people of color) doing decades of hard time
for something that is not even a crime a few hundred miles away.

~~~
leopoldo
That's a tough one. And I think these sentences need to be reviewed and some
of them revoked.

However, the underlying problem was that these people who are currently in
jail were doing something that was illegal at the moment. Their sentences need
to be revised, but it's probably not something I'd exonerate from all guilt.

According to the Ex Post Facto law [1] definition, a court could issue
amnesties or pardons for scenarios like this, but I don't think it would be an
automatic process over all convictions.

>> Disclaimer: IANAL

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law)

~~~
merinowool
Given that:

Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman told a journalist that the main purpose of the
War on Drugs was to attack Nixon's "enemies" and that they knew the WOD was
based on lies about drugs: > "You want to know what this was really all about?
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two
enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I'm saying?
We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But
by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with
heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their
meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know
we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-
on...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how-
president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/)

I think those people should not only be exonerated, but also treated as
victims of Nixon corrupt politics and given hefty compensation.

Advocating for the War on drugs should be a criminal offence.

~~~
RaceWon
90% of the world's heroin supply is from the Poppy fields in Afghanistan, and
everyone knows where those fields are. Do we (the USA) destroy those plants in
our Drug War efforts... nah. Some reports say US troops even guard them.

~~~
acct1771
Many reports.

~~~
RaceWon
I believe it was in the book "Everything We Had" (although I am not certain of
the source, because I read about it a while ago) that the only reason we were
in Nam, was so the CIA could protect the Poppy plants which they needed to
fund their Black Ops.

~~~
nyolfen
you need to read better books

~~~
RaceWon
Sorry, did I say that out loud??

~~~
RaceWon
It seems it was not in the aforementioned book after all, which btw was a good
read.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traf...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking)

------
kentt
I was under the impression that drug dogs we're mostly ineffective[1] anyway
so this shouldn't be an issue. I guess this article would imply I'm
misinformed. I'd welcome correction.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2015/08/04/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2015/08/04/federal-appeals-court-drug-dog-thats-barely-more-accurate-
than-a-coin-flip-is-good-enough/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f4481f79bd6e)

~~~
exelius
Drug dogs don’t need to be effective; they just need to establish probable
cause.

~~~
rhizome
To put an even finer point on it, drug dogs don't need to establish probable
cause, and they don't, they just provide a back door around the 4th Amendment.

~~~
greenleafjacob
Yes drug dogs need to establish probable cause, that is how they meet the
requirements of the fourth amendment.

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firmgently
Considering that laws are 'supposed to be' part of the structure that helps
society be pleasant/bearable for its members...

On the one hand you have people who inhale smoke from a burning plant despite
there being a law against doing so.

On the other hand you have people who want to lock a human being in a cage,
sometimes for the majority of their lives, because of the abstract notion that
they 'broke a law'; no matter what that law was or whether it's reasonable or
justified.

I know which kind of person I'd rather be surrounded by in society. Seeing the
way people toss around the concept of incarceration so lightly is somewhere
between monstrous and disgusting to me.

~~~
HumanHater
While smoking marijuana is victimless crime selling it is certainly not. There
are a lot of laws one might need to break to successfully sell drugs. Also a
lot of convicts financially supported Mexican cartels and bear some
responsibility for their crimes.

At the end of the day they new all the risks, chose to play this game to make
fast easy money, and they lost. It is like casino where you could win $5M or
lose and spend 5 years in prison. Now letting the winners to keep the money
but let losers go would not be exactly fair.

~~~
ryanlol
>Also a lot of convicts financially supported Mexican cartels and bear some
responsibility for their crimes.

Lawmakers created the Mexican cartels, and therefore bear most of the
responsibility for their crimes?

>letting the winners to keep the money but let losers go would not be exactly
fair.

Frankly it feels that you care much less about fairness than you care about
enforcing terrible laws.

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wollstonecraft
Dogs are actually trained to always "signal" the handler. You can't swear a
dog in under oath- instant probable cause.

~~~
Johnny555
Yeah, I assumed this was the standard mode of operation -- when officers are
"sure" there are drugs, then bring in the dog as an "impartial observer" to
show probable cause since everyone knows that dogs don't lie. Unless, of
course, they are signaled to lie by their handler.

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jhowell
Maybe they can become companions to people who get out of prison once their
marijuana convictions are tossed.

~~~
leopoldo
Imagine the dog going bananas every time his owner tries to smoke a joint.

~~~
freedomben
As long as smoke-time includes a fun ball or toy for the dog, he'd be in
heaven. They love the smell of weed cause it means a reward.

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jey
> cocaine is odorless until its fermented in a human environment

What does this even mean?

~~~
rhombocombus
it sounds like unsubstantiated nonsense. Cocaine, like many chemicals, has a
particular odor.

~~~
marshray
I'd love to see a dog detect the odor of an undoped polycrystalline silicon
wafer.

~~~
blattimwind
Ground silicon wafer smells like blood.

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darkstar999
> You can’t retrain dogs when it comes to marijuana,” adds James Woodford, a
> forensic chemist who created and patented the odor of cocaine that serves as
> the industry standard when it comes to training dogs to sniff out the
> substance.

That sounds like a fun job... I wonder how he did his research?

~~~
ralusek
He doesn't like cocaine, he just really likes the way it smells.

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squozzer
I am not sure retraining is necessary. Even in states where weed is legal,
they probably want to clamp down on "illegal" (untaxed) weed. No one has to go
to jail or even lose their stash - I expect a fine would suffice.

That pushes the question as to whether "regular" law enforcement would involve
itself in weed searches or if a state revenue department would handle it.
Moonshiners might have a useful perspective on this.

