Marijuana Breath Analyzer Could Be a Reality In 2020

Testing a driver for alcohol impairment is relatively easy compared to Marijuana.

Research shows drunken driving equals bad driving. Standardized tests mark various levels of impairment and because alcohol passes through the system quickly, detecting its presence indicates recent use.

But determining whether someone is too high to drive is a lot more complicated.

Despite marijuana’s growing acceptance nationwide and its legality for recreational use there is no consensus on how its psychoactive ingredient, affects drivers or what levels constitute driving under the influence.

That has left lawmakers, police and users with a critical question: If you’re using marijuana, when is it safe to get behind the wheel?

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An Oakland (Calif) company believes it’s solved one piece of that puzzle. By mid-2020, Hound Laboratories plans to begin selling what it says is the world’s first dual alcohol-marijuana breath analyzer, which founder Dr. Mike Lynn says can test whether a user has ingested THC of any kind in the past two to three hours.

“We’re allowed to have this in our bodies,” Lynn said of marijuana, which became legal to use recreationally in California in 2018. “But the tools to differentiate somebody who’s impaired from somebody who’s not don’t exist.”

Law enforcement agencies already are testing the breath analyzers and competing roadside devices like oral swab tests. But experts say there’s a long way to go before any of the emerging technology can or should be used as evidence in a courtroom.

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