Drug War Issues
Politics & Advocacy
The state of Florida is asking the US Supreme Court to reverse a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that having a drug dog sniff the front door of a residence is a violation of the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches. Court followers told the Associated Press the high court is likely to take up the case.
drug dog (wikimedia.org)
The justices could decide this month whether to take the case, the latest dispute about whether the use of dogs to find drugs, explosives and other illegal or dangerous substances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure. In previous cases, the Supreme Court has upheld the use of drug-sniffing dogs during traffic stops, at airport luggage inspections, and for shipped packages in transit.
This case is different because it involves a private residence. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that a residence is entitled to greater privacy than cars on a highway, luggage at an airport, or a package in transit. The court used that reasoning in a 2001 case involving the use of thermal imaging to detect heat from a marijuana grow operation in a home, ruling that the scan constituted a search requiring either a search warrant or probable cause.
"We have said that the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house," the court held in that case, Kyllo v. United States. The opinion noted that thermal imaging could detect such private matters as "at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath."
Jardines and his attorney challenged the search, claiming the dog sniff was an unconstitutional intrusion into his home. The trial judge agreed, throwing out the evidence, but an appeals court reversed the lower court decision. In April, in a split decision, the state Supreme Court reversed the appeals court, siding with the trial judge.
Now, attorneys for Florida are seeking US Supreme Court review. They argue that the state Supreme Court decision conflicts with previous rulings that a drug dog sniff is not a search.
"A dog sniff of a house reveals only that the house contains drugs, not any other private information about the house or the persons in it," wrote Carolyn Snurkowski, Florida associate deputy attorney general. "A person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in illegal drugs."
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Comments
Bail out Philip Morris?
Discuss with your Republican reps how much taxpayer money is being invested in training these dogs, along with how much grain to feed cows to make into dogfood etc. And check out how much campaign help or pleasant chummy lawbuyage they are getting from cigarette companies which give 2/3 of their political donations budget to the Republicans and generally support anti-cannabis legislators most.
Bear in mind that these dramatic measures, aimed at increasing the risk and security costs of growing hemp, translate to a high ratio of marijuana price to tobacco price-- inducing unknown numbers of teenagers in search of a cool "smoking" experience to give up on the cannabis this or that time, and settle for a bout of tobacco cigarette smoking instead, adding to the possible total figure of 900,000 new nicotine addictions yearly (USA) with important long term profit implications for the cigarette companies.
Price difference, taking New York City as a ballpark example: two packs of twenty typical 700-mg-net-weight cigarettes contain 28 grams of tobacco, almost an ounce for around $20; marijuana is frequently over $200 an ounce. This 10-1 ratio is what it takes to keep the obsolete deadly but still profitable 700-mg-per-lightup cigarette format afloat; once cannabis is legalized, so also will be miniature heat vape utensils based on 25 mg per serving, which once widely popularized and adopted by inhalant tobacco users, means an over-90% reduction in consumer demand for tobacco per weight.
So, what you're saying is,
So, what you're saying is, It's OK to discriminate against them, take away their basic rights, as long as they MIGHT be drug users..
DEA and ONDCP are both simply fascist systems. Both are self perpetuating unconstitutional organizations who's only goal is the persecution and destruction of the lives of US citizens. for profit.
yea the new gov. in florida
yea the new gov. in florida done away with a drug zar"a ob when he was elected. this man was making$500.000 a year. i have never heard of him or anything he ever done.GOOGLE BRUCE GRANT FOR INFO. this is the kind of salerys these special appointed people are makeing on the back's of your children. DO YOU THINK THEY WANT TO WIN THE DRUG WAR?
Police at their absolute
Police at their absolute best. Government caring less and protecting child perversion. I hate these sick freaks and what they did to my child and what this Governor and Attorney General are doing to allow it to continue! Andrew Scheroeder Badge #6969 of the Illinois State Police, August 15, 2007 led a drug raid on my home with a dirty search warrant. During this raid my then 9 year old daughter was permitted to use the bathroom. As a child (in passing) she looked into her bedroom and observed this individual standing over her laundry basket with a pair of her soiled panties up to his face. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan should be arrested immediately! They know and allow their State Police to commit acts of deviant perversion to a child and then look the other way and pretend it doesn’t happen! Not Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, nor Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan have the slightest concern over their rouge cops. A close look at all social unrest and you will quickly find that the underlying problem is almost always the police.
Police at their absolute
Police at their absolute best. Government caring less and protecting child perversion. I hate these sick freaks and what they did to my child and what this Governor and Attorney General are doing to allow it to continue! Andrew Scheroeder Badge #6969 of the Illinois State Police, August 15, 2007 led a drug raid on my home with a dirty search warrant. During this raid my then 9 year old daughter was permitted to use the bathroom. As a child (in passing) she looked into her bedroom and observed this individual standing over her laundry basket with a pair of her soiled panties up to his face. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan should be arrested immediately! They know and allow their State Police to commit acts of deviant perversion to a child and then look the other way and pretend it doesn’t happen! Not Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, nor Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan have the slightest concern over their rouge cops. A close look at all social unrest and you will quickly find that the underlying problem is almost always the police.
Dogs could just do me in.
I never dreamed I would write something like this because I grew up during an era when people had personal privacy. Between the drug war and 9-11, We the People have been forced to fund an ever increasing Big Brother atmosphere that is close to eliminating any sort of true personal freedom at all. A huge industry has been not just permitted but encouraged I suspect by those who profit from participating in it while adding significantly to the financial drain on our economy.
I who love dogs so much read the story about the sniffer dog and just wept. I am profoundly deaf and have trained several St. Bernard's to be my hearing assistants and they have done heroic duty. We live on a piece of property that really cannot be effectively fenced so we take turns walking the dog and it hit me. We are in a very quiet spot and our dog is really well trained but has been encouraged to think that all animals and people are her friends. I do not know how she would react to a canine sniffer dog on this property. She believes HER job is to take care of me and she is aware that I cannot hear and that the world isn't harmless.
Should a sniffer dog appear on this bit of land and we were both inside, all would be well but if I was outside walking her I cannot begin to predict her behavior. There is a prescription drug in this house that a sniffer might be interested in and as smart as those dogs are, they cannot read labels on bottles. So the handler of that dog could ask a judge for a search warrant to invade my tiny world because a dog picked up an odor.
Please, I have a special dog and know how wonderful they are but I do have to respect their limitations as they do mine. I live in fear these days of leaving my home because between the crime I am not equipped to handle and the ever intrusive government that is wasting time and money watching people like me lead our humdrum lives, I can only find peace in my home.
Added to my deafness are Crohn's disease and heart disease caused by a birth defect. Stress while unavoidable isn't something I seek out. But now I am reading that my little patch of space could be maybe unintentionally but quite possibly become the scene and cause of my demise.
I have had a full and good life but the longer I live and the more I see and read about the complete abandonment of what I was taught the Constitution was all about, the more I worry about the younger folks around me who are growing up not knowing there was a way of life in America that did not involve the government treating us a the enemy.
I missed the pot generation by a few years but doubt if many people I know have not tried it at some point or other. I have never had a drug addicted friend and have to look back on all of the heavy 1960's pot use and wonder why our representatives are so naive as to believe that that and ensuing generations have not turned into flaming drug addicts. We have not.
But I have two relatives that have the most pernicious and painful form of R.A. Both of them have had pot and one moved to a state where it was legalized just to get access only to find that the federal government claims it trumps all State legislation. That is not in the Constitution and furthermore for the life of me I do not understand how politicians can look some of their constituents in their faces. My relatives are homebound and in pain 24/7 and while they can legally get morphine and opium, marijuana use would send them to a federal prison if they were caught. And yet marijuana is what relieves their pain.
We are losing our decency and sense of humanity in this country and all I can see that can be done is to vote out of any and all offices a person who would spend a penny on the issue of marijuana. Children have teachers and parents and they have jobs to do. Sugar consumption is probably more of a threat than the use of pot and yet all the recent splash about kids being overweight is just that: splash. No on mentions recess has been cut and kids no longer can walk even three blocks to school. That's just sort of obvious and the anti drug folks have monopolized such a tremendous amount of the funding available to spend on their view of health related issues, that there never will be a end to junk food or even a cure for cancer. Automatic rifles, SWAT outfits and dogs that cost thousands and thousands of dollars to train are a total waste of the almost depleted resources of this nation.
The Supreme Court keeps letting the TSA have its way with us and that to me is very indicative of where they will come down on the sniffing dog situation. So I hunker down and pray that sanity will be restored to the people of the country We really are capable of being so much better than we are being permitted to be these days but we have to start to fight to take back Liberty.
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