ROSEVILLE CA (KOVR/CNN) - The way police dogs are trained in California is changing, because of the legalization of pot.
K9s will no longer be on the hunt for marijuana, their new job is to sniff heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.
Roseville Police Department’s 2-year-old German Shepherd K9 officer, Lance, is a police dog who loves playtime with his toys.
At work, Lance will soon become Roseville’s first K9 drug sniffing dog that will not alert his handlers to the scent of marijuana.
"Now they will not be trained on marijuana, they'll be trained on the other three," said Officer Scott Miszkewycz of the Roseville Police Department.
Lance is Roseville’s solution to the problem California created for law enforcement when it legalized pot.
The decision created an industry of overqualified drug sniffing dogs.
"Obviously the dogs have a career, a lifespan that they're used for, so we're fazing them out,” said Miszkewycz. “Once they retire out, we're not trying the new dogs on marijuana."
Defense Attorney Jeff Kravitz said, California’s decision to legalize pot is not only changing policing of marijuana, but it could also lead to prosecutors filing fewer cases involving drugs that remain illegal.
"Because they can sense that the juries won't care, and so they don't want to prosecute cases that the juries don't care about," said Kravitz.
Questions on how California’s new legal pot laws will affect courtrooms, K9 officers and their companions, remain.
In Roseville, the answer starts with new training for their drug sniffing dogs.
Besides lance, Roseville plans to bring on three other new drug sniffing dogs for their illegal drug searches.
Until then, K9s currently on the force will be kept out of drug searches and only used in other law enforcement roles.
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