Illinois police: Keep pot illegal -- or we'll kill the dog

[iscooterliberally]

As Illinois lawmakers debate whether to become the 10th state to legalize recreational marijuana, a few law enforcement officials in the state have put forth this bizarre argument:

If Illinois legalizes marijuana for recreational use, law enforcement officials fear job losses for hundreds of officers — specifically, the four-legged kind.

Police agencies spend thousands of dollars and months of training to teach dogs how to sniff out and alert officers to the presence of marijuana, heroin, cocaine and other drugs. If pot use becomes legal, the dogs would likely either have to be retrained — which some handlers say is impossible or impractical — or retired.

“The biggest thing for law enforcement is, you’re going to have to replace all of your dogs,” said Macon County Sheriff Howard Buffett, whose private foundation paid $2.2 million in 2016 to support K-9 units in 33 counties across Illinois. “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.”

Later in the story, a K-9 trainer suggests some or most of the dogs will need to euthanized.

(By the way, if you think it’s weird that a sheriff would have a “personal foundation” capable of spending more than $2 million on drug dog units for other police departments, so did I. It turns out that Sheriff Buffett is the middle child of the billionaire Warren Buffett.)

Here's a link to this story in The Washington Post from yesterday:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/05/08/illinois-police-keep-pot-illegal-or-well-kill-the-dog/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.efa190b54895

Yes, we have come to the point where life imitates National Lampoon Magazine I suppose: