It's Not a Search

 IT'S NOT A SEARCH

It's a dog lover's paradise.  A highly trained dog is an inspiration to all.  If you don't like dogs, I don't know what to tell you.  Many police departments, sheriffs, and other law enforcement agencies in Iowa and elsewhere now have dogs they drive around with so they can sniff out illegal substances.  Of course, this doesn't apply to marijuana for the reason that every cop in America has a nose acute enough to smell marijuana, burnt or unburnt, and in whatever form it may take without the use of a canine.

I am assuming it is part of the training of becoming a law enforcement person, learning the smell of marijuana.  They must have a special room at the training facility for that with the ability to fill it with various aromas of marijuana and marijuana products.  Isn't it amazing how much money is spent to stop you from using a little THC?  Just think, they get a whiff of marijuana and they can force you from your car and tear it apart looking for illegal substances.  Woe to you if you just drove in from Illinois and they find a "stem" while tearing your car apart and hence charge you with marijuana and haul you off to jail, impounding your vehicle, and otherwise making your day more difficult than it already was.  Welcome to Iowa.

What's particularly amusing is that a dog being pulled around your car to sniff out illegal substances is not a search.  And why is that? Because the courts say so.  They have simply decided that stopping your vehicle, either pulling you out of the car or not, and having their trained mutt prance around your car a couple of times to smell for illegal substances is not a search.  It is a wonderful thing when you can simply define something out of existence; when a search is not a search because they say it's not a search.  I wish I could do that.  It would make life a lot easier.

But the war on drugs continues here in Iowa and elsewhere.  I suggest you invite a member of the drug task force to give a talk to your school sometime.  Rather than asking him or her about the evil  of drugs, ask things like how they are funded and who funds them, how much money is involved in a search of a home where they find some marijuana.  Or better yet, how much time they spend going through people's garbage looking for evidence of illegal substances?  Do they have a particular affinity for garbage? Pertinent questions like that.

If it weren't for the fact that our governments have made it their business to make our lives as miserable as possible, the whole drug thing would be amusing.  But it is not amusing, when minding your own business, harming no one, having a decent day, you are hauled off to jail in handcuffs, hands behind your back, in the rear cage of a squad car,  and your car not only being impounded but ransacked so that you are not only required to pay to get out of jail but to pay to get your car out of hock. Quite an inconvenience actually, but fun for some.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo