According to a cocaine expert at the American Society of Addiction Medicine, cocaine sniffing is a relatively new phenomenon and not at all widespread. That being said, many people use cocaine regularly, and the sniffer dog field has recently experienced a tremendous surge in recruits.
Of course, that means that about one out of every sixty-five cocaine users has developed a cocaine craving. It is an alarming number and not a good sign for society.
Cocaine sniffing dogs are commonly used to find cocaine addicts in hot spots. The sniffer is trained to look for the presence of cocaine in a subject’s saliva sample.
The cocaine sniffer is often used in drug treatment centers to help detect the presence of cocaine users. For example, a patient who has ingested large amounts of cocaine will tend to have a higher-than-normal number of saliva in their mouth, which is a clear sign that they may be a cocaine addict.
Dogs are commonly used in outpatient treatment programs to help detect cocaine in the saliva of patients, or other samples of saliva before it can enter a treatment program. Cocaine With this new surge in interest, many facilities are finding it more cost-effective to train new sniffer dogs than wait for current dogs to be retired and replaced with original sniffers.
There are over 350 CBT/handler programs across the United States. This means that there are plenty of applications with no sniffer dogs or programs that only have half of their current dogs trained in cocaine detection. Since it costs so much to teach a CBT/handler dog, it is always beneficial to keep a few dogs in reserve just if the need arises.
The basic premise behind sniffing is that the dog’s nose is trained to pick up any scent that might contain cocaine, but the subject fails to chew on the hint, thus avoiding a “sniff test.” The dog’s handler will then hold the dog at bay until the item dares to remove the suggestion, after which the dog will break free and move to another area.
While this method is more accurate than “smelling” the subject for cocaine, the key is that it is still highly susceptible to deception by the question. A successful sniffer can find cocaine in the mouths of patients for long periods and often finds the drugs hidden in the gum line.