Now that cannabis is legal in Missouri, drug-sniffing police dogs face early retirement if they are attracted to the smell of marijuana.

Because some police dogs are sensitive to the odor of pot, they can compromise an investigation and prevent a successful drug prosecution.

If a dog is trained to detect marijuana as well as illegal drugs, it cannot separate them for a handler. The dog also cannot distinguish between a single joint and an unlawful amount of marijuana.

The prevailing solution is to retire those dogs and train new ones to identify only illicit drugs.

Under Article 14 of the state constitution, which governs cannabis, evidence of marijuana alone can no longer be the basis for a search in Missouri “without specific evidence indicating that the marijuana is outside of what is lawful for medical or adult use.”

Sgt. William Brown, head K-9 authority at the Kansas City Police Department, said, “A defense attorney is going to say, ‘Your dog hit on marijuana’ if there’s even one joint, no matter if there was cocaine or whatever else alongside it.”

All police dogs trained to detect marijuana were “discontinued” in Kansas City immediately after cannabis became legal in November.

“Everything becomes fruit of the poisonous trees if we use these K-9s,” Brown said.

Seeing it coming

Anticipating legalization, Capt. Brian Leer of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department said law enforcement “read the writing on the wall” and ended cannabis training for dogs in 2018.

“We had...

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