The year is 1284. The city: Hamelin. Our hero? The Pied Piper, summoned (in that fabulous multicolored robe, no less) by a weary mayor to play his dulcet tones and lure the city rats, who were eating grass seized by the police.
OH. Um, no. 13th century mice were simply annoying. They are the mice of Today who allegedly feast on cannabis seized by the police in dreamland. Ah, New Orleans.
“The rats are eating our marijuana,” said Anne Kirkpatrick, supervisor of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). said The City Council commission on Monday. “They’re all facts.”
Some thoughts.
With all due respect, Kirkpatrick’s comments, if nothing else, show that some police officers may know little about the weed they seize during their criminal investigations. That’s because, unless the rodents are discarding and munching on edibles, they are almost certainly not under the influence of drugs.
“If rats ate raw cannabis, I would be very surprised if they actually got high,” said Matt Hill, a professor at the University of Calgary. said Axios. Heat is needed to activate THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, said Hill, who studies rats and weed (a surprisingly robust field!). If the rats actually got high, the rodents sharing ownership with the NOPD would likely be noticeably more docile, lazy, and less aggressive. If you’ve encountered a mouse before, then you know it’s better than the alternative. (Consider COVID-19 pandemic-era rats, which reportedly it became wilder without access to the abundance of restaurant junk during lockdowns. Unsubscribe.)
Kirkpatrick’s comments came as he pressured the city to approve a move that would free the NOPD from its old building. A proposed 10-year lease, in a downtown high-rise, would cost taxpayers about $7.6 million in base rent. The agency’s current building is reportedly in disrepair and crawling with rodents and cockroaches, so that’s fair enough. But perhaps police could prepare for this withdrawal of money by spending fewer resources on seizing cannabis and more on solving serious crimes. In 2018, for example, the police solved the problem less than half of “crimes against the person” – crimes in which there was a victim – a statistic that has it remained disastrous how the years have gone by.
There is also always a plan B: the Pied Piper. So if you see a wacky man dancing down Bourbon Street, playing the flute and followed by a line of mice, then there are two possibilities: Kirkpatrick, unfortunately, couldn’t get the new lease. Or it’s Mardi Gras. Enjoy!