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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.
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.
Not very scientific. I'm sure most drunk drivers would say the same.
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.
From http://www.ukcia.org/research/...:
Alcohol makes you more aggressively confident, pot makes you more careful of your driving.
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've seen them do the same thing drunk as a skunk. So what? It's not the same thing at all. You can shut your eyes and play too. Try that behind the wheel.
Maybe people could just not be stoned or drunk while they drive? Is it that much to ask?
Marijuana slows reaction time and I think makes people less able to concentrate. So it definitely interferes with driving.
So does age. How many states have a law that says persons over X age must stop driving without taking individual circumstance into account? I can't imagine the uproar that would result if a bill were proposed that said anyone found driving over age X would immediately be arrested for driving under the influence of advanced age.
For that matter, how many states even require senior citizens to regularly prove that they have adequate reaction time and ability to concentrate? A few, very few, states do but not many.
Of all the things that can render a person unfit to drive, why are only two being singled out as needing to be measured by other than the functional ability of the drivers?
We see this throughout history, from the paid theif catchers of victorian england, to red light cameras, to ticket quotas, manditory sentancing, the war on drugs, etc...
Theif catchers saw well dressed criminals running "theif catching rings", bringing in very questionable arrests. Red Light Cameras saw towns make "short yellows", or shorten the amount of time a traffic ligh is yellow to encourage more people to accidently get caught running a red light, making intersections far more dangerous.
Ticket quotas resulted in uneven enforcement, mainly at the end of the month to meet quota. It also tended to make the officers do unsavory things like tailgate suspects with their lights on, and arrest people for marginal violations, all for the sake of making the town money.
Manditory sentancing gave a career criminal a chance to do anything else, merely made him get comfortable in prison, and often sent him back there.
The war on drugs speaks for itselves. Massive busts fuel the DEA's budget and allowed their reckless abandonment of any and all virtues this country has stood for, but seem to still take mabey %1 of total drug sales per year off the market. They've also been caught siding with one cartel against another, letting the system continue, so long as they got their portion of the pie, arrests, and with it, funding.
No sir, as long as their financial incentive, then there is an incentive for crime to continue. Especially in this day and age, when that incentive is making a "career" that pays better than anything else, and its union isn't subject for debate like other unions.
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.
I actually saw a test once with a race driver getting hammered between doing rounds on a track with cones and various obstacles, his best lap came after 7 double vodka-orange juice when he was all but wasted. It's not muscle control that's the biggest drawback with drunk driving, it's that your reaction time and reasoning ability goes to hell. Put a bunch of people in a car simulator, half with placebo and half with pot and I'm sure they'll drive fine in ordinary situations. The interesting bit is what happens in potential accident scenarios.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Because everyone knows alcohol doesn't damage your brain...
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
Think about musicians though. It's certainly possible to execute very precise muscle movements with precision and control while stoned. Why shouldn't you be able to drive?
That's a very good point.
How many of them drop a note or fat finger a string when stoned. Far more often than when they are sober.
The difference, and if you knew how to drive or play an instrument you'd understand, is that playing an instrument is mainly about muscle memory and rote memorisation of songs. Driving is about good perception and quick decision making. So a substance that lowers your reaction time and makes you more prone to distraction is the last thing you need whilst driving.
I can drive (both on the street and the track) and play the Guitar... but never at the same time (only have one pair of hands).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A stoned musician can beat a drum with ease, but they don't have to worry about multi-ton vehicles moving at them, lights unexpectedly changing, or circumstances that require reactions in the milliseconds, not seconds.
Good point. I don't think that even a Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd concert has required the band to take evasive action due to deer jumping onto the stage.
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
Your link is misleading. Yes, marijuana does not do good things to developing brains — there are much better studies which demonstrate this. There is no similar evidence which suggests that either moderate use or use beginning in adulthood has the same effect.
Here is the actual study in question. Do note that their average test subject started at age 16 and smokes five joints per day. From the article,
The association presents compelling evidence for white matter reacting differently to cannabis exposure commencing during adolescence compared with adulthood...
One joint does not a pothead make. You've pretty much already missed the boat for pot-related brain damage, but your knee-jerk antagonism against cannabis users is equally as dumb. Even if everything you imagine to be true about cannabis use was in fact the truth,
I think that THC use and Texting while driving should have the exact same penalties as someone who has .08 BAC.
This does not follow. There is no objective evidence suggesting that marijuana is equally impairing, and suggesting that any amount of use or exposure to THC is equivalent to being dangerously impaired is simple prejudice.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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?
Alcohol makes you more aggressively confident, pot makes you more careful of your driving.
Not as such.
Acute cannabis consumption and motor vehicle collision risk: systematic review of observational studies and meta-analysis
Acute cannabis consumption nearly doubles the risk of a collision resulting in serious injury or death
Effects on Driving:
... Marijuana has been shown to impair performance on driving simulator tasks and on open and closed driving courses for up to approximately 3 hours. Decreased car handling performance, increased reaction times, impaired time and distance estimation, inability to maintain headway, lateral travel, subjective sleepiness, motor incoordination, and impaired sustained vigilance have all been reported. Some drivers may actually be able to improve performance for brief periods by overcompensating for self-perceived impairment. The greater the demands placed on the driver, however, the more critical the likely impairment. Marijuana may particularly impair monotonous and prolonged driving. Decision times to evaluate situations and determine appropriate responses increase.
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
See the fallacy being presented! They are putting the cart before the horse. Before a government implements policy to go after stone drivers to prevent accidental death, it needs to be shown that stoners cause accidents! You can't just assume that. There is tons of data for alcohol related accidents. But there is hardly any for cannabis induced accidents... because there are so few, if any, documented cases of a person who is intoxicated ONLY with pot causing an accident. This is fear-mongering, pure and simple, and they're using their fear-mongering to set up controls that are inappropriate. You don't have to be afraid of the unknown... just admit to yourself that you don't know, and suspend judgement until you do.
The Admin and the Engineer
Have data that cannabis intoxication causes accidents before you make laws attempting to prevent these accidents. Don't assume. The facts are in stark opposition to the actions of these authorities. For every 10K alcohol related accidents, you may see one cannabis related accident. Seriously, its not even on par with texting, but likely on par with crashing because someone had their high beams in your face. Don't be afraid of the unknown, and don't make up things that make you afraid and pretend they are real. The scourge of cannabis induced car accidents is fiction. That being said, intoxicated driving is intoxicated driving, should still be illegal. But to spend God-knows-what on some technology for law enforcement to use when it certainly is not clear its necessary is really stupid. They're not going to prevent a single accident (because stoned drivers so so so rarely get into accidents), and they will have blown a bunch of money for nothing. What happened to hold your head back and touch your nose... walk a straight line? If you beat the sobriety test, you beat it! If that's not good enough, then wtf was it doing there to begin with? Police don't need a breathalizer to do their job... they just need to stfu and do their damn job: stop crime! Stop making up bullshit and costing taxpayers for no reason.
The Admin and the Engineer
Videoing does not help. Almost everyone can drive just fine when drunk; a car has four wheels and generally stays pointed in the same direction if you do not mess with it.
The problem is what happens when something unusual occurs. That is when being drunk gets you and people around you killed. If you are just videoing someone, you are unlikely to catch them in such a situation, and even if you do, it is too late.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Haha. I'm a daily smoker and I've never had an accident and avoided more than my fair share in more than 15 years. I know it's only anecdotal but I reckon you'd have just as good a result banning driving under the influence of too much caffeine. I mean, it makes you jittery and unable to concentrate properly, right? Bad news for driving.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If you've ever been stoned, you'll understand why driving a car while stoned should be forbidden.
Every accident which has been my fault has happened while I was stone sober, and driving like an asshole. That doesn't happen if I'm stoned. Your first citation gives no indication that drugs were involved, while your second citation says that the suspect had five drugs in his system, and one of them was Xanax, which by any measurement is a stronger impediment to driving than marijuana — and the other driver was also intoxicated, and they don't tell us what they were on. Perhaps it was alcohol. Your citations are shit, which is not surprising because your argument is shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'll tell y'all the same thing an old HS friend that was a countie mountie said when it came to pot..."Give me a pothead behind the wheel over a drunk any day of the week, the pothead will get paranoid and drive slower whereas the drunk always overestimates his ability and drives too fast. Never had to clean up a 3 car pileup from a pothead, been too many times i had to tell somebody their kid got drunk and wasted himself along with the poor soul they hit".
Working at the shop I've got to talk to many an LEO about this and they all say the same thing, the potheads are less aggressive, drive slower, are frankly just not a threat like the drunks are.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You don't get it. There's no way to reason with fearful idiots. They use words like 'multi ton vehicle' or imagery of bicyclists and such to try to get you imagining the worst things that can happen while suspendint critical thought.
They KNOW that driving after smoking pot is every bit as bad as driving while massively drunk and no evidence to the contrary will convince them ever. It's the way the neoprohibitionists masquerading as safety groups got the blood alcohol limit lowered to .08 when it is a simple provable fact that accidents involving injury or death almost always involve a level of .12 to .15 or even higher.
Yes, people with lower levels get into accidents but so do people who never drink. It's the spectacular multi car wrong way driving that these groups trot out in their quest for more restrictions even though more restrictions don't help because they don't address the problem. They just make some people feel good while ruining the lives of others.
So a test for marijuana that actually measures levels of current activity vs a month ago COULD be a good thing, but the very first thing that needs to be shown is that there is an actual problem at a certain level.
The only rational attitide here is to want proof and evidenxe before making a decision and the hell with either side's personal experience stories. .Meanwhile, expect the selfish moralizers to continue to engage in ad hominem attacks if you don't adhere to their prohibitionist mentality.
it is worth noting that the first DUI laws were passed based on consensus from the medical community about actual levels of dangerous impairment. They were around .12, which is the magic number to this day above which almost all serious DUI accidents occur. That number has not changed. Science is kind of like that. The laws however have changed. You see, some people were driving after having a beer and not getting convicted. That is unacceptable to the moralisers of the world, so they threw science out on its ear and they keep pushing for a lower and lower restrictions, hiding behind the banner of motherhood for political reasons in many cases, even though there is absolutely zero evidence in favor of it.
That is the sort of thing that people have to be on guard for here. With any substance, there is some level beyond which impairment put somebody in a position where they cannot perform the task of driving to minimum recognized standards. That is the level which needs to be prohibited. Anything else is just imposing your own fear or your own moral beliefs on someone else.
There is of course an even a better method of solving this problem. That is the test for the actual problem instead of a proxy. There are devices and tests that can measure reaction times. They are used in industries that actually care about safety instead of the perception of it. What we really need is the ability for a driver to prove using one of these tests but he or she is not impaired. Then whatever substance at whatever level is irrelevant. Of course, actual scientifictest like that would drive the prohibitionists absolutely bananas even though it would be superior because it would also catch things like people who are too tired to drive safely. Of course, the prohibition is the don't actually care about that because for most of them the goal is to demonize whatever it is they don't like and whoever opposes them.
This is true and well known to the police, and scientists as well. Alcohol inhibits glutamate (excitatory neural) receptors in the brain, so the more you drink the more your brain's activities are depressed. So the more drunk you get, the more impaired your mental functions become, and the less motor control you have. Pot has virtually no effect on glutamate receptors in the brain. It acts on endocanabinoid receptors which are in a whole different class. They are involved in other functions, including hunger sensations, pain sensations, and memory. There is some speculation that this system may be involved in clearing old memories, perhaps to make room for new ones. So ironically, pot would probably be better than alcohol for people in bars drinking and trying to forget bad memories.But pot does not impair driving abilities, and tends to make drivers more cautious. Testing for pot in drivers should not result in a fine, or license suspension, it should result in a "have a nice day" response from the officer as he hands you your license back.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
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.
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.
I have only once had to drive while high, to get a dog to the emergency vet.
No matter how hard I TRIED to go faster (I was taking the dog to the emergency vet after all), my body would not let the car go over about 50-55 on the highway and not over 35-40 on the smaller roads. About 10 miles under the speed limit in both cases. It's like my brain and body knew how fast it could handle things.and refused to go any faster.
Whereas the one time I drove while even slightly alcohol impaired (after a dinner and two apparently strong drinks) I immediately ran into a parking lot bollard and dented my truck. I stopped right there and went back inside the restaurant to have a dessert and sober up a bit.
So I can believe what you say.