But I beg another question. Are these dogs even effective in properly identifying the possession of marijuana? Further, should their alert be used as probable cause, the basis of a more in depth search?

Before I continue, I think the answer to those questions is “no.”

Traveling Abroad For Answers

In my limited amount of time to look into this, I couldn’t find much in the way of research on the use of sniffer dogs and their validity in America.

So, like anyone else who wants to find the answers to American propaganda I widened my search to include other countries.

To Australia!

The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties decided not too long ago to review the Police Powers Act. With a few differences, the way in which their police use dogs as a means to find illegal substances is very similar to ours.

In their review, they found that sniffer dogs “get it wrong in three out of five searches.”

Three out of five? Yeah, three out of five. But let’s take a few closer looks at what they found.

No Suppliers Found

I’m not too sure on the details of the goals of dog use in America as it regards to the ‘War on Drugs,’ but in a debate the NSW Police Minister said:

The Bill is aimed primarily at detecting and prosecuting persons committing offences relating to the supply of prohibited drugs or plants.

Basically, they are looking for drug dealers. Has the use of dog sniffers worked so far?

Sniffer dogs are intended to help police catch drug suppliers. They are a spectacular failure. Only about 1-2.5% of all people identified by sniffer dogs are drug dealers. In fact, only about 20-30% of all people identified by sniffer dogs are in possession of drugs at all. Of those, the vast majority are in possession of small amounts of cannabis.

I see. The dogs are only properly identifying 1 – 2.5% of those alerted as “drug dealers,” and with only a 20-30% success rate in identifying even simple possession.

The review continues with:

Drug detection dogs are being used by police as an excuse to trawl the community. The dogs are being used not so much for drug detection but rather to arbitrarily stop, search and detain citizens police would not otherwise be able to. Under the guise of sniffer dog operations, police are asking thousands of people for their names and addresses and storing this information on police databases – even when the citizen has committed no offense. This is a misuse of state power and must stop immediately.

So it seems that the police were using these dogs and their alerts as a reason to stop and question citizens.

Blind Faith In Dogs

More disturbing than the inaccurate use of the dogs to find drug offenders are the stories you hear about their handlers giving them queues to alert on a vehicle or person.

I know it seems like a conspiracy theory. But think about this. You are a cop, and you want to search a vehicle. The owner of the vehicle has told you that he does not consent. Now, not only are you not able to search the vehicle, but this punk kid is being a “smart ass,” what with his rights and all. That’s fine. I’ll just pull my dog out, wave my hand a bit, and blamo; I have probable cause.

The appalling inaccuracy of these dogs is compounded by the unwillingness of their handlers to admit this inaccuracy. The handlers offer many excuses for their dogs, for example that people identified had recently used drugs or were in the presence of those who did. Such excuses do not alter the fact that these dogs cannot accurately detect people in actual possession of prohibited drugs.

This blind faith is documented in the Discussion Paper. For example, one dog handler claims that his dog ‘never lies’. This leads to the disturbing attitude of dog handlers and police that anyone identified by these dogs is in someway connected to prohibited drugs– and if the citizen denies it, then law enforcement officials assume they are lying.

You have to remember that dogs (and other animals in general) have a very simple mindset. Though they have feelings, they are not as defined as that of a human.

When being trained, these dogs are rewarded for finging drugs. So, even if done so unconciously, a handler is rewarding his dog for finding what he wants to be found.

This dog only knows that when it finds what it’s owner wants, he gets a treat. What does his owner want? This marijuana. Or, maybe it’s plastic bags. Or maybe it’s brown paper bags.

See my point? Think Pavlov.

Cannot Provide Reasonable Suspicion

Given the dismal accuracy of drug detection dogs, CCL submits that it is not possible to claim that an identification by a sniffer dog is sufficient of itself to constitute reasonable suspicion that a person is in fact carrying prohibited drugs. It is certainly not possible to say that such a sniffer dog identification is sufficient of itself to formulate a reasonable
suspicion that an individual is involved in the supply of prohibited drugs.

The question of reasonable suspicion is extremely important in policing. In the case of prohibited drugs, a police officer may stop, search and detain any person he or she reasonably suspects of having in their possession or control any prohibited drug or plant.

I bring this part up for a very important reality of what I feel most people are not aware. You may be thinking that in order for a police officer to search your vehicle they would need to establish probable cause. And that a dog’s alert is so obviously fallible that it would not constitute needed cause.

Unfortunately you would be incorrect.

In 1998 Roy Caballes was stopped for speeding in his vehicle. The officer that had stopped him went through the routine as usual. Though the officer requested no aid, Trooper Craig Graham of the Drug Interdiction Team decided to join anyway. He pulled out his dog, which alerted to the trunk of Caballes’ vehicle. And inside, they found marijuana.

There was a short debate over whether or not the use of the canine unit was justifiable in the first place, as the first officer was already writing a warning with intent to leave it at that when Graham arrived. There was no prior reason to believe Caballes was in possession, but the dog’s alert was accepted as probable cause to search and Caballes was sentenced to 12 years.

Even after the Illinois Supreme Court said that the arrival of the drug dog improperly broadened the scope of the investigation from a traffic stop to a drug investigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that trained drug-sniffing dogs may be used to search suspects regardless of probable cause.

In Closing

It seems that sniffer dogs unreliable at best. And now that we have adopted their use so openly, they may be used regardless of your privacy rights.

Welcome to America.

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I thought to myself “I bet that site on all those commercials makes a good case against marijuana use.” So I head to abovetheinfluence.com to research what they have to say.

Sigh. Now my post is on hold while I talk about misinformation.

It seems that a major issue with educating others about the exponentially lower risks associated with marijuana use as compared to others is that we have to contend with “experts” who spread poor information.

Now, they aren’t coming out with lies straight up; rather, they are twisting words and adding opinions to their “facts” so as to fit their needs.

Look at this partial list of side effects taken from their marijuana page.

• Impaired judgment and motor coordination
• Shortened attention span and distractibility
• Anxiety and panic attacks
• Increased heart rate
• Increased risk of heart attack
• Increased risk for schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals
• Impaired judgment
• Problems with memory and learning
• Lowered motivation
• Decreased alertness and coordination
• Addiction

Most of these, if you really think about them, are pretty harmless. I mean, you know what else will increase your heart rate? Jogging. You should stop doing that.

However, the one about “anxiety and panic attacks” and “Increased risk for schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals” really caught my attention. Not because the wording is a little vague and subjective (”…in vulnerable individuals”), but because these are pretty serious side effects.

Above the Influence was kind enough to cite their sources. As such, I thought it appropriate to look into them. This is what prompted the abrupt change in my tongue and cheek post.

Elusive Data
Before we continue, you have to be very careful with taking the results of any study, either for or against marijuana use for a few reasons. First, no research is 100% accurate. There are always problems with participation.

You should also be mindful of the many variables involved in studies relating to the mental state of the populus, especially in such social drugs as marijuana, alcohol and tobacco. There are simply so many factors that come into play that no study can take into account.

Most importantly, very few studies are conducted simply for the truth anymore. More often, they are the result of an initiative put forth by a company with something to gain. This is true for either side of any argument. As such, they will usually nitpick the information gathered to fit the needs of an argument. It’s sad, but that’s the truth.

That being said, these studies do help us gleam just a bit of information, and are often handled and managed by people smarter than me.

I’m not saying you should ignore these types of studies, but that you should take a hard look before using them to back a strong statement.

Back to my post.

The first study I looked at was “Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study.”

I’m going to try to keep my thoughts in line on this post, but the information is all over the place. Please stick with me.

This study’s objective was:

To determine whether cannabis use in adolescence predisposes to higher rates of depression and anxiety in young adulthood.

The results were:

Some 60% of participants had used cannabis by the age of 20; 7% were daily users at that point. Daily use in young women was associated with an over fivefold increase in the odds of reporting a state of depression and anxiety after adjustment for intercurrent use of other substances (odds ratio 5.6, 95% confidence interval 2.6 to 12). Weekly or more frequent cannabis use in teenagers predicted an approximately twofold increase in risk for later depression and anxiety (1.9, 1.1 to 3.3) after adjustment for potential baseline confounders. In contrast, depression and anxiety in teenagers predicted neither later weekly nor daily cannabis use.

And the conclusion:

Frequent cannabis use in teenage girls predicts later depression and anxiety, with daily users carrying the highest risk. Given recent increasing levels of cannabis use, measures to reduce frequent and heavy recreational use seem warranted.

Before we continue, let’s make sure we see the numbers correctly.

• 1601 people participated.
• 60% had used cannibis before (apprx. 960)
• 7% of that were daily users (apprx. 67 people)

This is where things get funny. We are talking about 67 people out of 1601 that use daily. That’s 4%.  Throughout the study, we don’t see numbers as much as we see vague statements like “frequent” or “most.” I wish they would have been a little more strict with the use of numbers as opposed to such words.

The study also seems to place emphasis on women with statements like:

A strong association between daily use of cannabis and depression and anxiety in young women persists after adjustment for intercurrent use of other substances

and

Frequent cannabis use in teenage girls predicts later depression and anxiety, with daily users carrying the highest risk.

We know that women are more prone to depression than men anyway. (Read this for more info on that).

We also “know” that:

Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.

6.7%. That’s more than the daily users in our study in question. Sure, these numbers are from different contenents, and from different companies, but at least we are starting to see more of a truthful outlook.

By the end of the study we see statements like (emphasis is mine):

Possible explanations for the high degree of depression and anxiety found in young women who used cannabis often include underlying characteristics that predispose to both anxiety and depression, self medication of pre-existing depressive symptoms, and an adverse effect of cannabis on mental health. The association with cannabis use persisted after adjustment for concurrent use of alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit substances as well as indices of family disadvantage—findings consistent with a more direct relation. We considered self medication with cannabis but found no prospective relation between depression and anxiety in adolescence and later frequent cannabis use, consistent with an earlier report.

and

Cannabis use in young people remains a controversial area, and absence of good data has handicapped the development of rational public health policies. These findings contribute to evidence that frequent cannabis use may have a deleterious effect on mental health beyond a risk for psychotic symptoms. Strategies to reduce frequent use of cannabis might reduce the level of mental disorders in young people.

So, after reading through all of this, and attempting to understand as much as I can (I don’t pretend to completely do so), I feel that:

• The numbers in regular users are pretty low, especially if we are going to start talking about the number of people inflicted with depression.
• Because depression is more prevalent in women than men, this study seemed a little inconclusive with those statements; which was further promoted with words like “may” and “might.”

Hell, read it for yourself. It all seemed a bit inconclusive to me. Perfect for use in an agenda.

The next study I looked at was “Cannabis Use and Age at Onset of Schizophrenia.” Keep in mind that this is the source cited for the statement by Above The Influence:

Increased risk for schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals

The objective of this study:

The purpose of the study was to assess the independent influences of gender and cannabis use on milestones of early course in schizophrenia.

Read that carefully. Something is already amiss.

Method of study:

In this population-based, first-contact incidence study conducted in The Hague, the Netherlands, patients (N=133) were interviewed with the Comprehensive Assessment of Symptoms and History, and key informants were interviewed with the Instrument for the Retrospective Assessment of the Onset of Schizophrenia. Milestones of early course were 1) first social and/or occupational dysfunction, 2) first psychotic episode, and 3) first negative symptoms.

Wait, we are studying the onset of Schizophrenia, as it related to the first episode? We are then tying that into marijuana use? I thought we were finding out if marijuana induced the actual breakdown. Hmmm…must be my mistake.

Results:

Male patients were significantly younger than female patients at first social and/or occupational dysfunction, first psychotic episode, and first negative symptoms. Cannabis-using patients were significantly younger at these milestones than were patients who did not use cannabis. Multivariate analyses showed that cannabis use, but not gender, made an independent contribution to the prediction of age at first psychotic episode: male cannabis users were a mean of 6.9 years younger at illness onset than male nonusers. In contrast, age at first social and/or occupational dysfunction and the risk of developing negative symptoms before the first contact with a physician for treatment of possible psychotic disorder were predicted by gender, but not by cannabis use.

I see.

And the conclussion:

The results indicate a strong association between use of cannabis and earlier age at first psychotic episode in male schizophrenia patients. Additional studies examining this possibly causal relationship are needed.

Wait a minute. I think you should read that one more time. So it’s not that marijuana causes Schizophrenia, but that those who suffered from the illness suffered their first psychotic episode earlier?

And at the end of all of it, we get:

…Additional studies examining this possibly causal relationship are needed.

Possibly casual? OK, I’m done with that. It’s obvious I’m going to be reading a lot of studies in my small quest for weed knowledge, so I better learn to understand them a little better.

Keep your wits about you friends. If you are ever to have a productive conversation about the legalization of marijuana, you will be up against studies like these.

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