Large change comes with ripples, typically in directions impossible to fully predict. Naturally, this is the case with marijuana legalization sweeping the country and continent.
Case in point, K9’s in New York and growers in Mexico.
Training dogs to smell marijuana will no longer be needed in the state of New York, and it has become a pretty expensive void for some police departments.
A local CBS station in Albany details the story, speaking to a sheriff who says “Our dogs are trained to smell marijuana they smelled drugs so now a lot of departments are going to have to do away with or retire those dogs.”
These dogs can cost them up to $9,000, and that’s without training.
So it’s costing some police departments lots of money. That’s fine, honestly. These things happen with any innovation. Although legalization could also mean the end of a career for some.
ABC News has a story about a woman in Mexico who can’t find buyers for her large marijuana farm. Prices have been halved, 50% of their crops so unsold.
“It has never happened to us where we harvest and have it (stored) in sacks,” said the woman, whose real name was not used out of fear of retaliation from local gangs. Farmers are having to become more creative in what they grow, including higher quality weed and larger fields, but nothing has proven successful.
There’s also some skepticism that legalization will reduce crime, since the cartels’ profit is more and more being produced from fentanyl. But surely legalization is on the path towards peace.
Most newer legalization bills have justice reform baked in, like in the case of New York having some of the revenue being pivoted back to the communities most affected by the war on drugs. It’s unclear at this point what will be in the Mexico bill, but farmers having difficulty because of the dwindling demand isn’t something easily solved.
The ripples are real, and surely there’s gonna be some more we’ve yet to prepare for. But don’t let that for a second think that we’re not going in the right direction.
Read the K9 story here, and the farmer story here.
