The partnership between man and dog is something I take very seriously (see: http://stash.norml.org/category/personal/dogs-personal). We co-evolved – their senses and abilities helped us survive and our intelligence and tool-making helped them survive. In that spirit, I think dogs are abused when they are used as a tool to hurt people – a dog’s spirit is to protect and serve humans (“protect and serve”, where have I heard that before?) not search and destroy.

I understand guard dogs and hunting dogs but in their proper use, they are protecting humans from the danger posed by other humans and serving humans by helping bag a tasty meal. That’s legit. That’s why I don’t have an issue with bomb sniffing dogs, cancer sniffing dogs, junkyard dogs (there’s a pack of four American Pit Bulls guarding a auto repair place just two blocks from my house), even police dogs taking down a fleeing perp or subduing a riot.

But there’s something about a “dope dog”, to borrow George Clinton’s phrase, “an undercover narc with a bark”. I’m sure prohibitionists would use my “protect humans” argument here as well, that the K-9 is sniffing out the terribly dangerous drugs that ruin our society. That poor dog doesn’t know his olfactory ability to detect ganja means some young man sitting in the Texas sun on the side of a highway while Rangers dismantle his car to find a roach so they can lock him up in a cage for a few years. He just points it out to his human and gets a tasty reward for doing so.

Plus, searches aren’t that illegal anymore on our own property. Cops can come onto out driveways and plant GPS on our cars. In Indiana, a sheriff is talking about random door-to-door searches in response to that state’s supreme court ruling this week. The smell of pot and a noise are all cops need to break down our doors.

– an american living in the UK