It’s like the police can’t even conceive of solving a problem without shooting at it first. Mentally unstable person has a weapon? Shoot it. Black person driving? Shoot it. Canine auxiliaries need to be retrained? Shoot them all. It’s cool because all dogs go to heaven, even if they get there because the police are too lazy to do right by them.

The latest example of the cops’ fetish for brutality comes from Illinois. Police there are mouthing off against legalizing marijuana, and they’ve deployed one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard. Officials suggest that their marijuana-sniffing K-9 units would have to be “put down” should the state legalize pot. Retraining the dogs is too hard, say police. And the dogs have not been properly socialized and can’t be trusted to make it on the outside.

This is NOT from The Onion. The story was published in the Bloomington local paper, The Pantagraph. Here’s a summary in The Week:

There are approximately 275 trained narcotic K-9s in Illinois, with each costing the department thousands of dollars. Replacing the dogs would cost millions, and Chad Larner, the director of Maron County’s K-9 Training Academy, said “retraining” the dogs would be “extreme abuse.” “At this point, they’re trained on five different odors,” explained the Normal Police Department’s assistant police chief, Steve Petrilli, a former K-9 handler. “Once they’re programed with that, you can’t just deprogram them.” The dogs are also trained against being social in order to be effective workers, which led Larner to suggest “a number” of the K-9s would have to be euthanized in the event that marijuana is legalized, The Pantagraph writes.

Lots of people care more about dogs than people. Lot of people care way more about dogs than black people. So maybe threatening the dogs here will illuminate police logic to some of you in an important way. Because make no mistake, there is no more classic police line of thinking than: It can’t be rehabilitated, let’s shoot it until it stops moving. That is 100% cop-thought right there.

The police argument is stupid on a number of levels.

Level 1: Other states have legalized marijuana and they didn’t KILL ALL THEIR DOGS. Some of them can be retrained to sniff other, still illegal things. Some of them are still useful rooting out large quantities of marijuana that exceed regulations. Highly intelligent and well-trained animals can still serve in some capacity.

Level 2: Those dogs that are deemed “obsolete” can still find loving, happy homes. Not with a random family, of course, but with trained professionals who know how to handle them. K-9 units are taken off the line all the time. THEY ARE NOT MURDERED. Sometimes, their handler cares for them as a pet. Other times, the are retired to well-vetted owners who can care for them. The article says that there are 275 dogs in service in Illinois. You could absolutely find 275 suitable homes for these dogs among the citizens of Illinois, even if they needed to retire every single dog (which they won’t, see above).

Level All-Caps: YOU DON’T JUST THROW A DOG AWAY BECAUSE IT IS OF NO MORE USE TO YOU, YOU SICK POLICE A$$HOLES! What in the holy hell is wrong with you? If, in your ridiculous quest to stop people from enjoying a joint, you have so fully ruined 275 animals such that they can only function as pot-sniffing companions, then you must also accept the responsibility of caring for them. And the taxpayers who authorized this senseless war on drugs must also fund this part of the dismount. Rent a farm for the next 5-10 years (they’re dogs, they’re not tortoises, this is not a generational problem) and hire some guys to tend to these animals as they live out their natural lives. Christ on a bone. YOU BREAK IT, YOU BUY IT.

[ Ed. note : Breathe, Elie.]

This story comes with an extra dose of police barbarism, but it’s really quite similar to what law enforcement always does with pot: they try to ratchet up the potential “harm” of smoking it to the point where they lose all sense of perspective and proportionality. Smoking weed isn’t going to make you permanently stupid. It doesn’t directly lead to stealing your grandmother’s silverware for crack money. It didn’t make the Towers fall. IT WILL NOT KILL DOGS. It’s just a drug, better for you than cigarettes, worse for you than an orgasm. It’s not the harbinger of the moral failure of our society. It’s just… a thing.

We need to legalize marijuana. We need to legalize it so people can stop being so stupid about it.

If Illinois legalizes marijuana, what happens to pot-sniffing dogs? [The Pantagraph]