AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Two Ohio graduate students have invented a device that will allow law enforcement officers to determine whether motorists have used marijuana.
The Plain Dealer reports that two biomedical engineering graduate students at the University of Akron hope to market their roadside testing device to states where marijuana use has been legalized.
Mariam Crow and Kathleen Stitzlein’s device tests saliva to determine the concentration of pot’s active chemical in the bloodstream. Police must now wait weeks to get results from blood tests for marijuana use.
The two women recently received a $10,000 inventors’ award. They previously received Ohio Third Frontier funding to develop their device, which they are calling the Cannibuster.
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Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com
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This will lead to bad public policy. Studies show that drivers who have smoked pot are as safe as those who haven’t, with the only exception being when pot has been combined with alcohol beyond the legal driving limits. So a test like this lets cops continue to “beat up hippies” with no real public-safety interest to justify it.
Very tricky since various compounds from marijuana stays in your system for weeks. The article doesn’t address how they will show if you are actively under the influence.
Link to these studies?
Not the best link, but other work to do just now. There have been a fair number of them. Google is your friend.
A better link:
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/pot/2015/02/11/federal-study-drivers-who-have-consumed-pot-are-not-more-likely-to-crash-than-those-who-are-sober/
I don’t know the blogger reporting on this NHTSA study, but the Seattle Times has always been (for Seattle) the most conservative news source.