Packing Edibles? Careful. Cannabis-Sniffing Dogs Might be Able to Suss Out that Stash

Article by Sydney Perelmutter, Growth Op

Can drug-sniffing dogs smell edibles? It’s a commonly asked question on online forums such as Wikileaf, GrassCity and subreddits dedicated to everything cannabis.

The intention behind the question is simple: people want to know the risks of travelling across the Canada-U.S. border with edibles.

The anecdotal evidence, personal border crossing stories and pseudo legal advice offered tend to be largely inconclusive and speculative, with responses falling mainly into two categories: probably and probably not. Some think drug-sniffing dogs would have little trouble detecting cannabis within edibles; others contend cannabis undergoes chemical changes when baked into edibles, making it tougher for the dogs to detect.

Do edibles have a distinctive smell?

But the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) Dog Detector Service (DDS) teams, which are strategically located at various ports of entry across Canada, means there still remains a risk of being sniffed out by a dog at the border.

Edibles do, in fact, smell distinctly different from the plant and have an altered chemical composition. Todd Knupp, extraction specialist at Colorado’s University of Cannabis Technologies, says most commercially made edibles use a standardized extract of THC that does not typically include terpenes, the fragrant compounds that give cannabis its aroma. “It’s not that the odour of THC in edibles is undetectable, it’s just a matter of how thoroughly the dog was trained to pick up on the scent,” Knupp says.

Read the full article here.