Whether you're running a large-scale festival or a well-contained club night, you are likely to be concerned about the passage of drugs into your venue.  The ethics of drug use are hotly debated, but they are irrelevant to events organisers; any illegal substances inside your venue may cause serious problems both in terms of attendee and staff safety and in legal terms.  As such, even if the law did not require it, you're likely to want to keep as much as possible out of your event.  Hiring drug detection dogs is one highly effective way of doing this.  Here's what you need to know.

They're Highly Effective

Human security staff can look through attendees' bags, but in reality, this method is likely to be quite ineffective.  Seasoned dealers and users will know how to hide banned substances from suspicion, and your staff are unlikely to have the time to focus on each person individually.  No matter how much you focus on thoroughness, in the end your staff will be pressed to get as many people processed as quickly as they can.  By contrast, dogs can perform the exact same searches much more quickly - and it's impossible to hide the scent of illicit substances from a dog's well-trained nose.  As such, combining your human searches with dog support will help you process attendees faster, and be more effective.

You'll Need Several

The vast majority of drug detection dogs are only trained to look for one substance; this helps them to be clear about giving a 'yes' signal and reduces the number of false positives.  What it does mean is that in order to cover the spectrum of likely substances, you'll need to hire several dogs and handlers.  While this may frustrate you, one dog can cover a vast number of attendees very quickly, so you're still getting excellent value for money.

They're Great Deterrents

Because drug detection dogs are so effective, and seasoned dealers know that they're impossible to fool, even just having them at the entrance to your event may deter people from attempting to bring illicit substances on-site.  They don't want to be caught carrying anything, and will simply walk away rather than try to trick the dogs.  Of course, this means you'll lose one attendee - but needless to say, it's not the kind of attendee that your event will really miss.

Drug use continues to be a problem for a wide variety of events, and there'll always be a small margin of error - but hiring drug detection dogs to help police the entrances of your event will help to ensure that your event's margin of error is extremely small, and your attendees are safe and happy.  Not only that, but they'll do so quickly and for a very reasonable cost.