Dog Lauded, Life Ruined

Zeus (Mountain View Police Dept.)

Who doesn’t love a good dog? They’re man’s best friend after all; trained to keep a house safe, or to corral livestock on a farm, or to help a hunter locate their prey. Lovable beasts, unquestionably, but maybe you wouldn’t love a dog if you were allergic, or if you’d been bitten as a youngster.

Or maybe you wouldn’t love a dog because it cost you $75,000.00 in cash and over 100 pounds of pot.

That’s what happened Tuesday in California when the drug-detecting dog Zeus, working for the Santa Clara County Specialized Enforcement Team, helped officers confiscate cash, weed, and an undisclosed amount of cocaine during a raid of a South Bay house. Officers say they expected the weed to be sold out of state.

We don’t know whose house was targeted, or who the money and pot belonged to, but we do know this is one of the numerous consequences of the war on drugs.

But Joey, selling pot is illegal, and any person who is willing to do something illegal like selling pot is probably more of a risk taking dangerous person, willing to do other illegal things. Why would they stop at pot?

I understand that argument, but it means nothing when you know pot shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.

Every human in America should have sovereignty over their own body. The government has told the people what they can and cannot do in their personal lives, and that’s just not what the role of the government is supposed to be. The government is supposed to protect the people — that’s it; not babysit them, or spy on them, or tell them what they can and cannot do.

So remember, when you hear about one of these busts and the great work done by everyone involved — in this case praising the drug sniffing dog — think about the man on the other side of the coin. Were it not for laws that we the people no longer agree with, this guy wouldn’t be in trouble right now. They wouldn’t have his money, or his pot, or his freedom.

But they do. Chalk it up as another statistic. Over 50% of our prisons, STILL, are populated by nonviolent drug offenders.