Business
Cannabis Legalization Is Putting Police Dogs Out Of Work
Your need for weed is hurting the dog job market.
Minnesota legalized cannabis, and as a result, some dogs are out of a job. Canine officers such as Jango, a 9-year-old German shepherd, and Cobra, a 10-year-old Belgian Malinois, are set to retire soon after the law goes into effect on August 1, Capt. Ryan Mangan said, according to USA Today.
These pups are the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office’s only K-9s left trained to detect cannabis. Police dogs across the country are losing work as departments like Mangan’s no longer teach them how to smell your weed. If cannabis legalization continues to spread, it’s likely that these departments will never offer this class again. Meanwhile, cats are curled up at home, unaware that some animals actually have to work for a living.
Jango and Cobra are good old dogs (even police dogs are good dogs) already at the end of their careers. Their early retirement, which they get to begin enjoying after switching departments into patrol work, starts in September. Congrats to Jango and Cobra. If the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office is reading this, please don’t forget to throw them a proper cop retirement party.
But while doggos like Jango and Cobra may be out of a job, police are still interested in the canine job market. There are still plenty of illegal drugs, from cocaine to opioids, for them to sniff out with their cute snouts. However, apparently, you can’t untrain a dog. So any canine officers who pick up the smell of weed are getting sacked. They could compromise searches and get human cops in trouble.
While police dogs’ ability to snitch based on smelling cannabis smoke has been well-utilized by police departments, the skill set came with risks even before cannabis legalization swept the country.
Cannabis is also now legal in Maryland. According to Talbot County Sheriff Joe Gamble, per USA Today, a 2005 Supreme Court decision means that if a dog detects drugs during a traffic stop, the officer has probable cause to search your car without a warrant. He adds that when a dog smelled weed in his jurisdiction, it could often lead to the discovery of illegal firearms or other drugs.
However, should these searches lead to court, the search could be challenged if the dog was trained in detecting cannabis. This is why Raven, a very good Labrador retriever, was sent into retirement on July 1st. Then, there’s poor Kato, who was shuffled into patrol work just like Jango and Cobra in Minnesota. Kato now faces either retirement or being sold to a police department in a state where cannabis is still illegal.
“We just don’t need the headache of defense attorneys,” Gamble said.
Apparently, police dogs try very hard to be good police dogs and please their human cops. Lawrence Myers, a retired Auburn University professor who has studied detection dogs, told USA Today that while the dogs are a “great tool,” they are also susceptible to bias. A 2019 investigation by the Louisville Courier Journal found that in nearly half of the 139 traffic stops since 2017 in which drug K-9s suggested the presence of narcotics inside a vehicle, none were found.
“I’ve been an expert witness on I have no idea how many cases involving all sorts of things including drugs,” Myers said. “And in some cases, I’m afraid certain officers have viewed the dog as a search warrant on a leash.”
If you’d like to help a former cop dog, check out Mission K9. While many police pups are adopted by their handlers, the organization can even help you adopt a retired dog, in addition to offering rehabilitation services. Aside from helping these pups transition back to dog-civilian life, they even help rehabilitate the very brave police dogs who survived trauma while on the job.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/cannabis-legalization-is-putting-police-dogs-out-of-work/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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