House Bill 396 would pay departments up to $20,000 to retire K9s trained to sniff out marijuana, now that the drug is legal.
PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Police officers often use dogs to catch criminals and sniff out drugs.
But when Ohio legalized recreational marijuana in November, it made departments rethink how they need to train their K9s.
The Perrysburg Township Police Department has two K9s. Both dogs are trained to smell meth, heroin and cocaine, among other drugs. Only one is trained to sniff out marijuana, though.
“When you’ve been rewarding a dog and you’ve been praising a dog for so long for finding that odor, now all of a sudden to switch it and telling them you don’t want that odor, it becomes difficult,” said Lt. Jason Gladney, a Perrysburg Twp. police officer.
Attempting to retrain the dogs can be so unreliable that the marijuana-sniffing dogs instead need to be retired and replaced.
“There’s a lot of resources that go into starting up a K9 unit,” Gladney said. “There’s a lot of expenses, there’s a lot of time.”
A K9 can range from $7,500-20,000, according to state Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania).
“(It’s) an unintended consequence of Issue 2 passing,” Williams said. “We’ve seen this coming since medical marijuana was initially implemented that this would eventually become a problem.”
Williams is one of the lead sponsors of House Bill 396, which would pay police departments up to $20,000 to replace the dogs.
He said K9s alerting officers for marijuana could also bring legal issues.
“If that dog alerts to something perfectly legal, that’s not grounds for search anymore,” Williams, also a defense attorney, said. “Even if you find drugs afterward, it’s going to get thrown out, it’s going to get suppressed.”
Glandney said the younger dog of Perrysburg Township police’s K9s is trained to smell marijuana. If the bill passes, he said the department would consider applying for the money.
Nearly 400 trained police dogs in Ohio would need to retire, according to a report by the Associated Press.
The bill has been introduced in the state House but still needs to go through committees before heading to the House and Senate floors.
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