PDA

View Full Version : The Pot Breathalyzer Is Here. Maybe




Swordsmyth
08-04-2018, 08:14 PM
As legalization of recreational and medical marijuana continues to expand, police across the country are more concerned than ever about stoned drivers taking to the nation's roads and freeways, endangering lives.
With few accurate roadside tools to detect pot impairment, police today have to rely largely on field sobriety tests developed to fight drunk driving or old-fashioned observation, which can be foiled with Visine or breath mints.
That has left police, courts, public health advocates and recreational marijuana users themselves frustrated. Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana (https://marijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006868) and 30 states and D.C. have legalized medical pot.
Now one California company claims it has made a major breakthrough in creating what some thought of as a unicorn: a marijuana breathalyzer.
"We are trying to make the establishment of impairment around marijuana rational and to balance fairness and safety," says Hound Labs (https://houndlabs.com/) CEO Mike Lynn in his downtown Oakland, Calif., office.


In a freshly pressed dress shirt and short hair, it's clear Lynn is no stoner inventor with a pipe dream. The former venture capitalist is a practicing emergency room trauma physician in Oakland and an active SWAT team deputy reserve sheriff for Alameda County, Calif. He knows first hand the devastating effects drugged and drunk driving can have.
He picks up a small plastic box. "This is a disposable cartridge. And there's a whole bunch of science in this cartridge," Lynn says as he slips it into the device about the size of a large mobile phone. A small plastic tube sticks out of one end.
He starts to blow into the tube for the required thirty seconds.
Indicator bars start to show whether the machine detects any THC in his breath. THC is the psychoactive component in pot that gets you high.
Hound Labs says its device can accurately detect whether a person has smoked pot in the last two hours, a window many consider the peak impairment time frame. "When you find THC in breath, you can be pretty darn sure that somebody smoked pot in the last couple of hours," Lynn says. "And we don't want to have people driving during that time period or, frankly, at a work site in a construction zone."
Lynn then slides the cartridge into a small base station the size of a laptop, used to protect against cold or hot extremes. The breathalyzer needs a consistent temperature to have consistent results.
The device also doubles as an alcohol breathalyzer, giving police an easy-to-use roadside for both intoxicants.


About four minutes later, the results are in.
Negative. No THC or alcohol in Lynn's system.
For law enforcement, Lynn says, "really the key is objective data at the roadside, just like we have for alcohol."
Tools now on the market to determine marijuana test blood, saliva or urine can take days for a result. More importantly, they can't really tell whether a person has smoked a half hour ago or eight days ago. THC dissolves in fat so it can stay in your body up to a month after use.
But Lynn claims the company has overcome the technical and scientific hurdles and can accurately measure THC in breath molecules in parts per trillion. That's "kind of like putting together more than a dozen Olympic size swimming pools and saying, 'Hey, go find those 10 specific drops of water and in those 10 pools put together.' It is it is ridiculous how little [THC] there is" in breath.
Alcohol impairment is measured in parts per thousand. "THC is something like a billion times less concentrated than alcohol. That's why it hasn't been done before because it's really hard. It's taken us five years to overcome those scientific obstacles."

The machine detects THC's mere presence in the breath, but it cannot calculate the amount of THC consumed.
Police are trying to figure out who is potentially impaired, Lynn says, compared to "somebody who smoked maybe yesterday or a few days ago and is not impaired. They're not in the business of arresting people that are not impaired when it comes to marijuana. That makes no sense at all."
A few police departments plan to start testing Hound Labs' breathalyzer this fall. "They're interested in it providing objective data for them at the roadside," says Lynn. "That's really the key, objective data at the roadside — just like we have for alcohol."

There's still no agreement on what amount or level of THC in breath, blood or saliva constitutes functional impairment.
So far only seven states (http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/drugged-driving-overview.aspx), including Washington and Montana, have set legal guidelines as to how much THC in the system makes you dangerous behind the wheel. Yet some scientists are skeptical (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/30/523004450/scientists-still-seek-a-reliable-dui-test-for-marijuana), saying those limits aren't really backed by hard science.
In the rest of the country, courts, police and scientists haven't been able to agree on which THC level constitutes functional impairment.
Studies on marijuana and driving, post-legalization, have been mixed.
One survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drug-impaired-driving) showed that, while marijuana users are more likely to be involved in crashes, that risk may be in part because of demographics. Pot users are also more likely to be young men, a group already at high risk for car wrecks.
Drugged driving incidents have risen steadily over the last decade plus, paralleling the nation's opioid abuse crisis and decriminalization of pot.


The Governor's Highway Safety Association raised the alarm in a recent report (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF17/20180711/108525/HHRG-115-IF17-20180711-SD003.pdf) saying State Highway Safety Officers now rate drug-impaired driving "equal to or more important than driving while impaired by alcohol."
In Colorado, one analysis of highway safety after pot legalization showed that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for marijuana is up significantly. (https://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/25/colorado-marijuana-traffic-fatalities/)
And in Washington state, where recreational pot is legal, a study from April of this year (http://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2018/04/Marijuana-and-Alcohol-Involvement-in-Fatal-Crashes-in-WA_FINAL.pdf) showed that of drivers in fatal crashes who were tested for intoxicants — 61 percent were positive for alcohol and or drugs in their system.
Research by the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia University showed that half of young drivers, age 16 to 25, who died in car crashes (https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/young-fatal-crash-victims-used-either-alcohol-or-marijuana) were under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or both.
But to what extent and how long marijuana affects driving response, judgment and skill is not yet fully known. And what role, if any, THC played in those car crashes is unclear. "We need more research to establish the dose-response relationship between THC level and crash risk," says epidemiologist Guohua Li, who directs the Columbia center and conducted that study.
Li, who calls drugged driving "a silent epidemic," says that additional research is vital because "there's a widespread misconception that it's OK and is safe to drive after smoking pot.And the public — especially teenage drivers — are not well aware of some of the hazards of drugs such as marijuana on driving."
A major study underway (https://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/index.php/2015-11-20-20-52-15/active-studies/62-ab266) on driving impairment at University of California San Diego's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research is scheduled to wrap up next year.
"We are not only looking at how impaired a driver is at different levels of smoking, but also how long that impairment lasts," the study's lead author, Thomas Marcotte, recently told Member Station KQED. (https://www.kqed.org/science/1927766/state-funded-marijuana-study-could-lead-to-better-policing-on-roads)
Other groups, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., are working on creating standards for a marijuana DUI detection test.

More at: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/634992695/the-pot-breathalyzer-is-here-maybe

pcosmar
08-04-2018, 09:40 PM
PHUCK THIS SHIT.

and on top of that.. I will put my driving to the test any time any Track.

It has been tested through Blizzards..and Road construction zones.

I have never (even Drunk) been as bad a driver as most I avoid daily.

pcosmar
08-04-2018, 09:43 PM
I am already paying the 37% "leave me the Phuck alone" Tax.

nikcers
08-04-2018, 10:21 PM
You would think that with all of the different industries that have been fighting marijuana legalization there would be some "conclusive" science on whether or not it kills people. What we have is politicians trying to cash in on selling false solutions to imagined problems by pushing the stupid narrative that its as dangerous as beer. Let me guess now they are going to come out with some sort of fake study that says it causes people to drive bad, and pretend like its never been studied thoroughly enough before?

pcosmar
08-04-2018, 11:13 PM
You would think that with all of the different industries that have been fighting marijuana legalization there would be some "conclusive" science on whether or not it kills people. What we have is politicians trying to cash in on selling false solutions to imagined problems by pushing the stupid narrative that its as dangerous as beer. Let me guess now they are going to come out with some sort of fake study that says it causes people to drive bad, and pretend like its never been studied thoroughly enough before?

I want a GT 40 with a pot leaf paintjob... and a Track Pass for a certified time ticket.

let me show you how a pot smoker can drive.

fastest man on foot,,fastest man swimming,,

The ignorance really needs to be put to rest decisively.

jkr
08-04-2018, 11:37 PM
something, something, Constitution of United States of America 1789 (rev. 1992)

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

nikcers
08-05-2018, 12:18 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_uq_9_M80E

dannno
08-05-2018, 01:00 AM
Plenty of studies have shown people with moderate amounts of cannabis in their system drive more safely than the average sober person.

The whole idea that with legalization, suddenly hoards of stoners are going to start driving on the roads is ridiculous. We have been. For decades. If it was a problem, we would have known by now.

Alcohol has completely different effects than cannabis. Alcohol changes the viscosity of the fluids in your ear so it makes balancing very difficult, and explains why drunk people tend to swerve. People who are stoned don't swerve. Their reaction time is not impaired. They are usually calmer and don't drive as aggressively or with aggressive emotions. Caffeine is more dangerous to drive on than a moderate amount of cannabis for someone who has some experience. I wouldn't recommend driving your first time, wait until you are comfortable. But that's another benefit of cannabis, if you are too impaired to drive you know it. With alcohol, a lot of people who are not ok to drive will become courageous because of the alcohol and think they are ok to drive when they are not.

pcosmar
08-05-2018, 10:16 AM
The whole idea that with legalization, suddenly hoards of stoners are going to start driving on the roads is ridiculous. We have been. For decades. If it was a problem, we would have known by now.


They are pushing that theme, and it needs to be Squashed. Decisively.

pcosmar
08-05-2018, 10:19 AM
Too high to drive?

I don't know what that means.. Driving,, or taking the car apart and fixing it..

I'm better with a hit before I start.