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Two Ohio lawmakers are looking to ease a looming financial burden on law enforcement agencies in their state that will have to replace marijuana-sniffing dogs after voters approved a plan last year to legalize recreational marijuana use.
Nearly 400 police dogs in Ohio trained in the detection of marijuana will need to be retired because they cannot be reliably retrained. That means any alert they give to the presence of drugs could be challenged in court because they cannot unlearn the smell of cannabis.
State Rep. Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma, called that an “unintended consequence” of the decision by Ohio voters in November to legalize recreational use.
Brennan and Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania, are the lead sponsors of a bill that would provide each agency with up to $20,000 per dog to offset the cost of acquiring, training and equipping narcotics dogs that don’t alert to the smell of marijuana.
“I don’t think that anybody that voted for the issue, either intended or knew that this was even going to be a problem for our police departments, and it’s a real concern,” Brennan said.
He noted that acquiring the dogs and training them is a major expense.
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