DEA Administrator Says Pot Prohibition Protects Dogs; Many Dead Dogs Would Disagree

Testifyng before a House subcomittee
yesterday, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration warned
that marijuana legalization is
bad for dogs. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart was not
talking about the
pot-sniffing canines who are out of work in Colorado and
Washington now that the odor of cannabis is no longer probable
cause for a search. She was talking about pets that ingest
marijuana-laced snacks:

There was just an article last week, and it was on pets. It was
about the unanticipated or unexpected consequences of this, and how
veterinarians now are seeing dogs come in, their pets come in, and
being treated because they’ve been exposed to marijuana. Again, it
goes back to the edibles; it goes back to products that are in the
household that are now made from marijuana, and it’s impacting
pets. We made a list of the outcomes we thought that might happen
in these two states. We never thought of putting pets down.

Evidently Leonhart read a recent
USA Today story in which Colorado veterinarians
worry that “the increasing availability of marijuana appears to be
driving an increase in pot-poisoned pets.” Poisoned is a
rather misleading term in this context, since “the marijuana itself
isn’t particularly harmful to dogs.” The main concern is that
marijuana, an anti-emetic, will make dogs less likely to vomit
potentially dangerous foods into which it has been infused, such as
butter and chocolate. According to a study by Colorado State
veterinarian Tim Hackett, two dogs have “died from eating large
amounts of marijuana-infused butter” since 2000, when Colorado
legalized marijuana for medical use. That’s one dog death every
seven years. Still, marijuana legalization clearly is bad for
dogs.