Startup companies like Hound Labs are inventors who find a complicated question: How high are you?
Getting people to enroll in scientific studies is usually a long and challenging process. Not for Hound Labs, which works on a respirator that shows if you have smoked smoke in the last few hours.
Earlier this year, when the launch of the Bay Area wanted to get the pot rookers informed to test device accuracy, the staff put posters and asked friends to refer them.
In another clinical trial people are stoned and drive a car around a controlled lane - all in the name of science. (No word about whether the brave volunteers will get the Taco Bell afterward.)
The staff of the Hound Labs, along with a handful of other companies and groups, addresses a pervasive and striking problem: as more states make marijuana for both recreational and drug use, more stoned drivers get the way according to a April report for Governors Highway Safety Association. Of the drivers who died in cars and tested in 2015, more than a third were some form of marijuana in their systems. And since Colorado and Washington are entitled to recreational marijuana, there has been an increase in reports of deaths and drug-related cases.
But it is difficult for the police to check how recently and to what extent they smoked marijuana because the body makes the drug much different and less predictable than in alcohol, and in a urine test, THC, the component of cannabis that becomes People high can appear about one month after use. As soon as there are no objective, quantifiable evidence, risky drivers can deny costs - and fast drivers can be falsely accused of being high.
"The challenge with marijuana is the medicine does not work like alcohol. You should not get a level that is a .08 equivalent," said J.T. Griffin, Chief Government Affairs Officer for Mothers for Drunk Driving, referring to the National Blood Alcohol Concentration Limit. "And that's really what research needs to be done and some research needs to be done. How do we best determine what marijuana condition looks like?"
Hound Labs raised $ 8 million last month from Benchmark, the venture capital company Silicon Valley. Lynn says that by the end of the year he begins selling respiratory equipment, initially to law enforcement agencies and, perhaps, in the future, to employers for drug screening tests. Other companies and scientists working on their own breathtakers include Cannabix in Vancouver, Canada and a research group at Washington State University.
Sound illuminated Scientists are not so sure. These groups "have put a lot of promotional material on their products, but they have not provided scientific information for anyone to see if they work or do not work," says Marilyn Huestis, a former chief of chemistry and drug metabolism at the National Institute for Drug Abuse, and a Cannabix consultant.
Moreover, scientists and legislators disagree with how much THC it takes to drive someone. Eighteen states have a kind of law about driving under the influence of marijuana. Some enable drivers to have limited levels of THC while others have zero tolerance approaches. And the rules are as contradictory as the rules on marijuana itself: Medical marijuana is allowed in Washington, D.C., and 29 states and recreational use in eight plus D.C., as of April.
"Yes, there is marijuana around," said Jim Hedlund, an independent traffic safety consultant who co-authored the report for the Governors Highway Safety Association. "Is it detrimental? For some drivers it is certain - but you can not only wonder about its presence that is detrimental."
Drunk people tend to "weave and weave and not be able to walk a straight line," Lynn said. "Marijuana is what happens often, the inability or reduction of ability to make calls", such as deciding what to happen if a child suddenly stops at a crossroads.
The way your body eliminates alcohol is quite simple: the more you drink, the more it gets in your blood and breath, the more it affects your brain, and the effect disappears over time. But while alcohol is water-soluble, THC concentrations tend to decrease rapidly as the drug works through the body and the feeling of a high-rise increases. In normal smokers, the THC may remain in the body long after the euphoria.
"If you smoke 10 joints a day, what does it do to your level compared to someone who smokes once a month?"
An advantage of a respirator is that police officers already use breath tests on suspected drunk drivers, says Lynn. (Hound's device is designed to pick up alcohol next to marijuana.) And Lynn says that Hound's tools would cost the same as an alcohol respirator: about $ 500 to $ 1,000 for the main device and $ 15 to $ 20 for each disposable cartridge.
THC levels could also be measured in saliva, which, like breath, is much easier to get than a blood or urine sample of an overriding, disoriented driver. In fact, there are already a handful of saliva-based THC tests on the market, such as the German company Drager. But there is not enough evidence to support their widespread adoption, scientists say.
Each marijuana screening test must eliminate an extremely high accuracy table, said Huestis, the toxicology consultant. The cannabis plant contains dozens of cannabinoids in addition to THC, including those that do not produce high, so a device must be able to separate them, not to mention that nail is the time schedule in which someone actually falls under the influence of the drug.
Huestis argues that those laws can never set a universal disability level, because research has shown that people metabolize marijuana differently based on a number of factors, including just how a smoker is. Instead, she says officers should do arrests and pressure on the basis of a field test test and a biological test that shows which drugs are in their system.
"We have all the information we need to know, there is no number that will separate and identify from all disabled people," she said.
