Some police training dogs to not notice pot

BREMERTON, Wash. -- When Dusty, a 19-month-old black Labrador, walked past a pipe full of marijuana during a recent police search of a house, he was doing exactly what his handler hoped.

The newest drug-sniffing dog on the police force in Bremerton, near Seattle, is one of a few police dogs in Washington state that are not trained to point out pot. Other departments are considering or in the midst of retraining their dogs to ignore pot as well, part of the new reality in a state where voters last fall legalized marijuana use.

"We wanted to train our dog on what was truly illegal substances, that would be heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine," said Dusty's handler, Officer Duke Roessel. Police in Bremerton, Bellevue and Seattle, as well as the Washington State Patrol, have either put the dogs through pot-desensitization training or plan not to train them for marijuana detection.

The law decriminalized possession of up to an ounce of the drug for individuals older than 21. It also barred the distribution and growth of marijuana outside the state-approved system.

Police say that having a K-9 unit that doesn't alert to pot will lessen challenges to obtaining search warrants because the dog won't be pointing out possible legal amounts of the drug. -- AP