DEA warns of stoner rabbits if Utah legalises weed: 'They have developed a taste for it'

Agent recalls seeing rabbit that was fiending for more

(Getty)

We're used to hearing worries over the prospect of widespread criminality and lethargy with marijuana legalisation (neither of which are real incidentally, just ask Colorado), but a Drug Enforcement Administration agent has unearthed a new problem: rabbits might trip balls and not have the energy to hop around anymore.

"I deal in facts, I deal in science," special agent and member of the 'marijuana eradication' team in Utah Matt Fairbanks told a senate panel last week. His colleagues recently raided a retiree's back garden and seized several okra plants.

He went on to explain to the panel, which was debating whether to legalise edible forms of cannabis for patients with debilitating conditions, how at mountainside grow sites he had seen "rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana.

"One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone."

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that animals could develop a taste for the drug, but using this as grounds for prohibiting marijuana use is analogous to banning alcohol because of drunk chipmunks.

Fairbanks also complained of the potential environmental costs, though, as The Washington Post notes, these are not specific to weed and would be the same if corn were outlawed and then grown illegally.

As more and more states start discussions on the relaxing of cannabis laws, it emerged in a scientific study last week that the drug is 114 less deadly than alcohol.