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Breath Test For Pot Being Developed At WSU
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Tacoma, WA's News Tribune: A team at Washington State University is working to develop a breath test that could quickly determine whether a driver is under the influence of marijuana. Law enforcement officers already use preliminary breath tests in the field to estimate drivers' blood alcohol content. But no similar portable tool exists to test for marijuana impairment ... Stoned drivers have become an increasing concern since Washington voters legalized recreational use of marijuana ... A quarter of blood samples taken from drivers in 2013, the first full year the initiative was in effect, came back positive for pot. ... officers and prosecutors rely on blood tests to determine how much active THC is present in a driver's blood. Those test results aren't immediately available to patrol officers who suspect someone is driving high." Also reported: "Under Washington's legal marijuana law, those who get caught driving with a blood content of at least 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter are subject to an automatic driver's license suspension of 90 days or more."
As great as any new technology is, I hope this is antiquated by law changes before the technical application machines become practical.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I'd like a test to check reflex speeds differences between alcohol and pot, and they can set the law to be set so they treat them the same.
I'm not sure what other areas of behaviour they effect, but until we get in crash data, it would be a good place to start.
It's easy to see where this is going.
Marijuana users = Revenue stream: taxes and Driving While Impaired/Intoxicated tickets
It will probably help improve public safety.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Sounds like a whole new market of incriminating users and indoctrinating them into the system. We are simply not ruining enough lives anymore. We NEED to find a way to Ruin more lives. Plus... Extra cash is always good. We need a new Tank... We chipped the paint on the first one.
After it became legal in CO I've been playing around with it a bit and I think there is a huge difference between driving high and having used small amounts. I think if someone takes a few hits to relax about traffic they are going to be safer than a "sober" but frustrated person who tailgates and jackrabbits around. I don't think this is as cut and dry as alcohol.
and it seems like people can drive slower and more carefully when high, maybe the cops should be giving us money instead for being such good drivers!
Come on, this is simple to do. Offer the driver a scooby snack.
Where are the properly controlled studies showing that a given level of blood THC is causally related to an increase in driving accidents?
Or will they go the route of cell phones and accidents and only look at the THC blood levels of drivers in accidents so it's impossible to show causation?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
So the cops blood tested all of these people with what I assume is probably cause and only 25% were actually under the influence? Or do they just randomly blood test everyone and 25% of all Washington drivers are high?
We will know we have reached the pinnacle of civilization when we see our first smoke filled self-driving car drive by.
I think we're parked, man!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Slower yes, but still a danger to themselves and others. Here in Oz the booze busses make you blow in the bag for booze, and lick the lollypop for drugs. Here in Victoria, the random booze busses have cut the total number of deaths on the road by over 50% in the last 25yrs (from over 700/yr down to under 300/yr), this is despite there being twice as many cars on the road. The highest death toll was in 1969 when there were something like 1/10th the number of cars on the road as there are today, no seatbelts, no breathalysers, no speed/red light cameras, ~1200 people killed a year.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
A machine is required to tell if someone's been smoking marijuana? The bloodshot eyes and half empty bags of Doritos covered in chocolate sauce aren't enough to make the call, eh? Not to mention, you know, the fact that the smoke has a rather distinct odor. By all means, let's spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to develop the Obvious-o-Tron.
Scientists, engineers, and the politicians who support them live so incredibly detatched from reality.
Be it alcohol, legal drugs, illegal drugs, lack of sleep...the term is driving while intoxicated/impaired, or in the case of distracted driving, sleepy driving it's called careless & imprudent. I don't want ANYONE intoxicated/impaired on the road. Once the medical & legal venues sort this out, as they did with alcohol intoxication, one for marijuana can be developed. I don't care if you snort, shoot up, smoke, drink or whatever, but, TAKE A CAB or stay at home.
My stance on pot has angered many from both the pro-pot and anti-pot camps. I have been waiting for a test along these lines - preferably easily-administered and quantifiable - to determine when someone has taken in too much pot to be in public. Then we can really treat pot the same way we treat alcohol - with fines for those who have taken in too much to be in public - and I would be fine with open sales. As I've said before, I don't even give half a shit how stoned you are if you stay home (or have a designated driver [taxis are fine]) but if you decide to go out driving while stoned you can spend the night in jail and get a DUI along with the drunks.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That is a marvelous achievement.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Even the National Highway Traffic Administration says measured active THC levels can't be correlated with impairment:
"It is difficult to establish a relationship between a person's THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects ... It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone." - http://www.businessinsider.com...
Also, given the difference in absorption rates between edibles and smoking, it's possible for someone who ate it to be more impaired but give a lower reading than someone who smoked it. - http://www.theverge.com/2012/1...
I can smell a pot smoker from a mile away. Put people before technology for once, and give me the job!
A lot of people have tried pot. A lot of people can spot someone who is high to the point of impairment. A lot of these people are police officers who don't even need training to spot someone under the influence.
There's the smell method. The stench of marijuana isn't exactly easy to get rid of, even if it's masked. Then there's the eyes, usually red and tired looking. Don't forget about the smoke, and the buddy system (the one were your friends are high too and are too dumb to hide it from the cops).
Last, let's not forget that all too true telling feeling of euphoria and being easily amused. Seriously, how many people will not be high and able to have a laid back, go with the flow behavior, when a police officer pulls them over for driving too slow?
Okay. Argue. But please, argue when you're high. Let's keep this light hearted. :)
Drunken drivers already cost us a fortune in enforcement, jailing etc.. Now we have another very expensive issue with pot and driving while high. Worse yet the strength of each dose of pot will vary wildly so the user can be much higher than he intended to be or less high than he intended to be. And being that people who have just smoked pot are not able to tell at all how high they are they will tend to drive when many times they should not. Since we already lock up more citizens than any nation on the planet can the tax payer really afford this problem? And just to make it even a darker issue our jails and prisons usually make a person worse than when they offended and the worse the jail or prison the more likely inmates are to turn to a life of crime. We need teams of ministers to be in the jails and being there at all hours to stop what amounts to torture of inmates. Such policies as making it very, very difficult to get any reading material at all, charging huge fees for phone calls which breaks up families, failure to deliver quick medical care in emergencies and deliberate abuse by prison staff need to be halted dead in their tracks. The idea is to release a better inmate and not fill inmates with rage that will effect their behavior when released.
Why not use a swab as an initial indicator like in other parts of the world.
I don't understand why this necessitates new technology, especially when it would seem more important to study level of impairment with drug concentration before going any further down the legislative road.
They use a saliva test here in Australia.
Why not just use the existing saliva test?
http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/fact-sheets/the-facts-about-roadside-drug-testing-web-fact-sheet
I prefer Labrador... http://youtu.be/1jHi-8Ykx-8
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2782906/The-terrible-truth-cannabis-British-expert-s-devastating-20-year-study-finally-demolishes-claims-smoking-pot-harmless.html
Hippie communists..
People driving stoned drive nice 'n slow and don't get road rage. Stoned drivers are safe drivers.
Anyway the solution for me for over a decade now has been simple: don't drive. Not because I'm concerned about hazards, but because corrupt cops use your automobile as an excuse to harass and search you. No car, no problem. Fuck the police.
Side benefit: better health from lots of walking and doing your little part for the environment taking public transit when needed.
And oh yeah, did I mention? Fuck the corrupt police who want to make money on cannabis in every possible way (including the sale of it). Fuck them. They can pry my joint from my cold dead hands. My joint that I did not buy from them, as much as they try to force me to.
I worked with a chemist 15 years ago to develop such a product. A professor had found a salt, Fast Blue B, would change color specific to THC.
We were charged with trying to commercialize this, BUT, we couldn't prove that blood ratio had anything to do with breath concentration.
Breathalyzers for Alcohol are calibrated with an inferred ratio of 2100:1, of blood/breath concentration ratio. This is usually a fairly accurate assumption. The alcohol molecule is very volatile. THC on the other hand is a very different beast. If someone has smoked Marijuana, what you are reading is the residue on the lining of the airways which has a very poor correlation to what is in their blood.
This alone was enough to kill the idea, because ingesting vs smoking would give wildly different results.
46137
Slower yes, but still a danger to themselves and others. Here in Oz the booze busses make you blow in the bag for booze, and lick the lollypop for drugs. Here in Victoria, the random booze busses have cut the total number of deaths on the road by over 50% in the last 25yrs (from over 700/yr down to under 300/yr), this is despite there being twice as many cars on the road. The highest death toll was in 1969 when there were something like 1/10th the number of cars on the road as there are today, no seatbelts, no breathalysers, no speed/red light cameras, ~1200 people killed a year.
It should also be noted the population of Australia in 1969 was 12,000,000 compared to todays 23,000,000. So we've quartered the road toll whilst doubling the population.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Your post advocates a (X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting pot. Your idea will not work....pot doesn't harm you. I'm too sleepy to finish the form.
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
and instead criminalize actual "potentially" harmful behavior
someone is tailgating ticket that regardless of the reason, someone is speeding, not signaling, failing to yield, merging unsafely then sanction those
if someone is staying in their lane, driving reasonable speeds for the road conditions, signaling properly, and obeying traffic laws why the fuck does it matter what is in their blood?
A field sobriety test doesn't care what substance you've been imbibing. It tests your current level of impairment. Which is what we should be looking at if the goal is to reduce injuries and fatalities on the roads.
Why waste all kinds of money on tests that may or may not be able to measure actual impairment? And that goes for alcohol too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Add to this the education campaigns which have been very effective at stigmatising drink drivers AND those that let their mates drink drive. The combination of knowing you run a pretty good chance of getting caught and people around you trying to stop you has been very effective.
FTA, "But no similar portable tool exists to test for marijuana impairment via a breath sample".
So it appears a portable tool does exist, a breath test and a saliva test (via a lick) isn't too dissimilar.
It's been impossible to get up to the speed limit since they made pot legal in Colorado! Pick any random road and everyone's driving 10-15 under! Ticket revenues are drying up fast, and people in a hurry are experiencing a lot more RROOOAD RRRAGE! It's either this or Taco Bell needs to start delivering, thus removing any need for those people to be out on the road!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The new safety features in cars make most attempts to determine safety statistics by crash outcome meaningless.
I've seen the 'lollypop' on Tv only (There are 3 reality police shows on Oz Tv at the moment.), not in rural Queensland.
Queensland motorists have a 'get home fast' mentality. Of course, that lead-foot attitude permeates other journeys, with too many Queenslanders practicing it every time they start the engine. I think the police allow this so it's easy to make their traffic fine quota in the last week of the month. (A few years ago the government promoted a 'every K over, kills' anti-speeding campaign then suggested relaxing the speed control requirements of the driver's test.) I've visited urban Victoria and everyone drives slow by comparison. I'm told it's because Queensland allows 8 km/h over the limit while Victoria allows 0 km/h.
I'd rather want to see the statistics for severe accidents than that of road deaths. You might have noticed that cars got a tad bit more safer since 1969, your chance to survive in a modern car is by some margin higher.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... if you've been eating brownies.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Drunk drivers run red lights. Stoned drivers just wait for the stop sign to turn green. Which one is more likely to cause an accident?
I don't think most street cops find marijuana in and of itself to be a very big threat. Many may have some cultural objection to it, but I think mostly they like it illegal because it provides great leverage for harassing people.
I wonder if the drive to find a DWI-like tool for checking for pot consumption among drivers isn't about safe driving but instead looking to regain some of the edge they had when marijuana was illegal.
I doubt we know enough about marijuana yet to develop any kind of biochemical intoxication standard (outside of physical impairment tests) like we have for alcohol due to the persistence of THC (ie, urine tests positive weeks after use). So any new system developed will probably have some kind of granularity that could flag a person who smoked pot an hour ago to 24 hours ago at best and STILL not have anything more than a crude correlation to their possible impairment.
But, public paranoia, the neo-Temperance League moralism of groups like MADD and LEO authoritarianism will combine to make such a "Potalyzer" an acceptable standard and more or less give back LEOs the ability to harass people.
Frankly, I DO wish there was both a hard-science standard of measurable THC impairment AND a magic device to do it with. It would probably help establish that actual impairment for most people is a small number of hours at all but extreme doses and eliminate the nonsense urinalysis screening and discrimination that goes with it.
It will become clear even to the stoniest hippie that drugs and driving do not mix.
"I've smoked for years and never had an accident."
is pretty much the same as
"I've kept a gun in every drawer in the house for years, and never had an accident."
"I drive drunk every day and have never had an accident".
"I have unprotected sex often and have no STDs."
As a cyclist I agree with the guy above who said "fuck you" to all you bastards that think the risk of an accident is acceptable - you will usually hurt others more than yourself. If you need medication to avoid freaking out on the road, you should not drive at all.
Revoke licenses and prohibit offenders from legally enjoying soft drugs - you abuse it, you should lose it.
I just love how they bring up the "% of folks who tested positive for marijuana" like every other slanted sound bite does when it comes to this supposed epidemic of stoned drivers. What they fail to clarify, as usual, is that the vast majority of those people were also drunk, on pills, and/or on other narcotics at the time, which is why they were being tested and presumably were impaired in the first place. They just happened to smoke a joint at some point during all their other drug use. The amount of folks who have only smoked marijuana at some point and driven dangerously enough to pull over is rather tiny.
having driven stoned, i can honsetly say that pot does indeed impare your ability to drive a car. maybe after 1 joint (rizla king size with tobacco) it doesn't really show up but driving home from a whole night of smoking sure makes it a difficult task. a single pipe or bong hit is way to much to be driving on. there is testing here in the UK with a mouth swab test at the road side, in france they use a similar system too. driving under the influence does reduce your ablity to drive safely. maybe by not as much as drink, but it does make someone a worse driver when stoned. a breath test would just be faster and think it's a good idea.
The levels for alcohol (generally 0.08) were not set by any scientific means. Back in the 60s, faced with people arguing about whether they were actually impaired and whether field sobriety tests were accurate measures of driving ability, the AMA was asked for a recommendation. They said "0.10 seems like a nice round number: most people with 0.10 show obvious signs of intoxication" -> note well "most people" and "show signs"... nobody ever did a controlled study to determine driving performance. For that matter there is no research to say what level of driving ability (say in a simulator) corresponds to "safe", regardless of the alcohol level.
the Neo-abolitionists at MADD (which has long since diverged from its original roots) ran a big political campaign to get the "prima facie" limit dropped to 0.08. More on a "if 0.10 is good, 0.08 is better" kind of logic, not with any research behind it.
They don't need a breath test, just the sheet of paper test.
Have the suspected person grab a piece of white paper. if they leave an orange residue (likely from doritos, cheetos or some other ____os) they are high. If the paper comes back clean, they are good to go.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Even though I'm a medical cannabis user (migraines), I do believe that people shouln't be driving under the influence -- of anything, and that includes the doctor's and pharmacorp's favourte: opiates.
Here in Saskatchewan, the law is intentionally vague and refers to "Driving Under the Influence" without that being restricted to alcohol. If you're obviously impaired, the police don't have to run a bunch of tests to determine what you're impaired by -- it's your driving that is the deciding factor, and your inability to pass basic roadside sobriety tests.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Being stoned may very well make you a better driver, but I and most of the other people on the road don't really want to be part of a live experiment to determine whether that is indeed conclusively the case. So how about you just wait until you get home, then we won't need these breathalyzers, and once more evidence has been collected about the impact of pot on various activities we can revisit the issue in a more factual way.
It really annoys me how quickly the ideologues jam up these debates. A democracy means you have to be prepared to compromise. People who want to ban pot everywhere are from the same cast as those who are all principled about their right to smoke pot everywhere. Both of those points of views helped propagate the stupid pointless ideological war of the last few decades. The moderates have worked very hard to deal with the endless no compromise positions these ego fest tends to generate.
So just chill out, and we can all work towards a solution where each party's needs, fears and egos are adequately placated.
Stoned drivers have become an increasing concern since Washington voters legalized recreational use of marijuana
Right! Because that was the day people started smoking and driving! Nobody ever did it before legalization!
Oh man where do they find these people? Too damn funny.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You need to cite primary sources, not biased secondary ones. http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25800/25867/DOT-HS-808-078.pdf
A man nibbles on an edible, then flips out and blows his wife away while she is on the phone with 911.
http://kdvr.com/2014/04/24/edible-marijuana-may-be-key-to-defense-of-man-accused-of-killing-wife/
But if it can't happen, then that means the man faked the symptoms, and he should be charged with First Degree Murder. But like I say, there are all kinds of news reports of marijuana helping people seize their own personal Darwin awards. And do you really believe that "cautious driver" baloney? Because in this particular incident, the suspect is not described as being careful or cautious. No, he's stark raving mad.
http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25800/25867/DOT-HS-808-078.pdf
"Drivers under the influence of marijuana retain insight in their performance and will compensate
where they can, for example, by slowing down or increasing effort. As a consequence, THC's adverse effects on driving
performance appear relatively small."
Start the test with dangling a couple Twinkies on a string and validate with a bag of nacho flavored Doritos.
As if a NORML screed is written by impartial scholars. Pay attention to actual events Two fatal incidents in which the overdosed perpetrators are described as stark raving mad.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/two-denver-deaths-tied-to-recreational-marijuana-use/
http://www.oxtox.com/
Get as high as fuck and beyond literally every waking second. And if you can still blaze up at all you're not smoking enough. There should be a 4oz a day minimum requirement. Then double it and double it again. What could possibly go wrong?
Chewed the face off another man while high on marijuana. Not careful or cautious. Cops shot him. Fatal.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ronald-poppo-face-chewing-victim-still-recovering-one-year-later-hospital/
http://www.wpbf.com/news/two-years-after-causeway-cannibal-attack-where-is-ronald-poppo-now/26417338
I don't think that anyone would be so foolish as to say or suggest that THC does not impair driving skills, although the degree of response to THC is much more varied than with alcohol. I'm sorry you read something in my words which you found to be misleading, but I'm glad that you found the linked article to be informative; my goal was to provide more accurate information about the nature of THC intoxication and not to characterize it myself. It is clearly a complicated subject and I didn't want to either quote-mine or take the time to provide a balanced summary.
If I may be allowed to clarify the sentence to which you object, I would say that the GP's comment (the quoted one) was absurd on its face. As they say, the dose makes the poison. There may be some level of THC intoxication which is equivalent (by some measure) to the effects of a .08 BAC, and research in determining that would presumably be worthwhile. Knee-jerk ignorant anti-cannabis rhetoric (or legislation) does not contribute to a reasoned discussion.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
No one would work the corn fields to give the rest Doritos for the munchies, therefore everyone would die.
human nature.
Ya legalize something that cant be detected, controlled or monitored..
Lets make lotsa money at the expsense of everyone, Biting the hand that feeds you?
fucking stoopid, and in DC even where this shoudl not be
How are you supposed to avoid a ticket when all a cop has to do is breathe into it first so you'll test positive?
Found the grower.
Garthim, attaaack!
Pot does not affect reflexes the way alcohol does, though I do believe it affects perception enough to be dangerous to drive at elevated concentrations in the body. Even someone who is totally baked NEVER stumbles around and slurs speech the way a drunk person does, but such a person certainly doesn't exhibit good enough judgement to operate a vehicle.
I followed a stoned driver to her home one evening way back when..i was invited over. That experience convinced me driving stoned is a very bad idea. This person took a "creative" route home, changed lanes randomly, drove 65km/h on a 100km/h freeway, tapped the brakes to the tune on the radio at one point, used the turn signals randomly...there was most definitely an impact on driving skills. Plus she invited *me* over, which in itself probably said something about her impaired judgement ;-). If I were to replay those events i would have given her a ride home and worried about getting her car later...
Just because you are not physically impaired by a drug does not mean you are not impaired, and just because you are not speeding does not mean you are not a danger. A stoned driver has no judgement skills and in one way is like a drunk person; his or her recollections of events while impaired are skewed. Other drugs may even make your reaction times better but severely impair judgement. Drivers on cocaine, heroin or meth have caused mayhem because of their erratic mental state.
The most dangerous form of impaired driving, in fact, is not physical impairment and does not involve any chemical impairment at all...that would be texting while driving. When a driver texts in a moving vehicle that person still has full physical abilities and quick reactions, however judgement is severely compromised due to the distraction. Talking without hands free is almost as bad. Distracted drivers behave very much like an amplified version of a stoned driver.
Driving stoned is illegal for a good reason and should remain that way...just because other impairment is worse doesn't mean it is ok. By all means, if you want to kick back and have a toke go ahead, not judging anyone for that, but a person should take some responsibility when driving out of consideration to others. Put away the mobile, get some rest, don't be drunk, don't be stoned, don't be high. If you can't do all of those, make alternative transportation plans.
where do you sign up for this "test"
So, how or what will the mechanism be to measure the level of THC in the blood or breath? Also, what will those numbers correspond to? No one knows and there has never been any published corollary numbers to back that up. It's always been, you are either high or not high.
A quarter of blood samples taken from drivers in 2013, the first full year the initiative was in effect, came back positive for pot. .
If I smoked last week it is going to come back positive. This doesn't mean I am stoned right now. Blood teast and piss tests do not show if you are stoned at that moment. They just show you have smoked in the last 30 days or so. The samples taken just show thay has somoked at some time not that they were driving while stoned.
Sanjay Gupta CNN Special, Weed
and
Sanjay Gupta CNN Special, Weed 2
Amazing videos.
It's actually 3Km over in Vic (used to be 5%). I've driven in both states many times, don't notice much difference except the level of traffic in Melb is much higher than Brisbane. Sydney is the worst city to drive in, roads are narrow too.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sure cars are a lot safer now than in '69, consequently the Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) have mandatory safety ratings for cars, and they have heavily advertised the rating system for a couple of decades now. Also seat belts were made compulsory in Victoria in 1970, the subsequent drop in the road toll was very noticeable in the stats.
The success of the modern TAC here in Victoria is due to the bipartisan science based approach, but the on road results are why the public genuinely support them. The TAC came into it's current form in the late 80's, we know that random breath tests work because we were amongst the first in the world to introduce them. We watched our stats improve much faster than similar jurisdictions without the RBT's. A few years ago they added the drug lollypop to random testing but so far their use has been limited to the extent I haven't seen one yet despite several random tests in that period.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think so too, that's what happens when both sides of politics decide to attack the problem, rather than each other!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.