Weed got legal faster across the United States than traffic cops could keep up with. With no analog to the alcohol breathalyzer test available, cops have either had to guess, with legal dubiousness, whether a pulled-over driver was high. That might be changing soon, as a team of researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University has developed a prototype THC breathalyzer test.
The 3D-printed device could eventually give police a quick, roadside way to detect if a driver has recently used marijuana. The team, being led by forensic scientist Emanuele Alves, designed a device that works a little bit like an inhaler. A driver exhales into a mouthpiece, triggering a chemical reaction inside a cartridge. The compound in marijuana responsible for getting high is delta-9 THC. If present, the mixture in the cartridge turns dark red, indicating that the driver at the very least has marijuana in their system.
Currently, testing for marijuana requires lab analysis that can take days. This device can deliver results within minutes. It’s also sensitive enough to distinguish between THC and other cannabinoids like CBD, a non-psychoactive compound in marijuana, which would be valuable in reducing the risk of false positives.
According to the team’s research, which was published in NIJ, the device can detect marijuana even in small amounts, between 10 and 100 nanograms, using a color-based system built from fairly inexpensive materials, making the device ripe for mass production.
THC Breathalyzer Tests Just Got One Step Closer To Reality
It’s a surprise that a device like this doesn’t already exist, as cannabis is now legal for recreational use in about half of the states in the US, while nearly every state allows it in some form. While a roadside marijuana breathalyzer could help police ensure roads are safer, there is still no specific consensus on what level of THC actually equals impairment.
That’s where the whole discussion gets messy. Several federal studies have found that THC concentration in someone’s system doesn’t reliably correlate with how impaired they are. A regular smoker might have a higher baseline and could theoretically blow a high number on a breathalyzer, but wouldn’t be cognitively impaired. The occasional weed smoker, on the other hand, might be impaired after one small hit. Other studies have shown that drivers at legal THC limits aren’t significantly more likely to crash.
It’s taken a while for a marijuana breathalyzer to hit the market, but it seems like that was even the tricky part. Even if the device works as intended, states and maybe even the federal government need first to agree on something close to a consensus on the meaning of impairment as it relates to driving while high, since, as of now, it’s a nebulous phrase with no clear definition anytime soon.
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