With marijuana legalization making as much progress as it has in the last few years, it was only a matter of time before someone developed a marijuana breathalyzer. It seems a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police is close to doing exactly that.
The new device called the Cannabix was developed by Kal Malhi and will be able to detect whether a person has smoked marijuana in the last two hours. The Cannabix supposedly works in a manner similar to that of traditional breathalyzers used by law enforcement to determine the blood alcohol content of drivers.
“People are becoming very afraid to drink and drive nowadays because they feel that they will get caught and charged, but they’re not afraid to drug and drive because they don’t feel that law enforcement will do anything about it,” said Malhi.
Although the Cannabix is pending a patent and still has further field testing to undergo, it’s a step in the direction long awaited by law enforcement: a bright line test for DUI of marijuana.
States which have legalized recreational marijuana and some states which have legalized medical marijuana have established a per se impairment level at 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. Ohio and Nevada have established a per se limit of 2 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. Some states which allow medical marijuana have established a zero tolerance rule.
You’ve heard me hoot and holler about the flaws of such standards. THC can stay in a person’s system for over a month. A month after smoking marijuana, the “high” is long gone but, unfortunately, the THC is not. Yet these standards allow officers to arrest someone even though they are no long impaired.
As promising as something like the Cannabix looks to law enforcement, it too does not determine how impaired a person is after smoking. Sure, proximity in time to the smoking of marijuana certainly has a correlation to degree of impairment. (Remember, the Cannabix will tell officers if a person has smoked within the last two hours) We still don’t know how much someone has smoked or how impaired a person is two hours after smoking.
The purpose of alcohol and marijuana DUI laws are to prevent impaired driving. Being impaired is what makes our streets dangerous, not whether someone has smoked marijuana at a given point in the past. The Cannabix creates a DUI standard of how long it’s been since someone has smoked, not whether they are actually impaired.
Imagine if we had the same standard for alcohol: You have one beer at dinner. You drive home an hour and a half later. For whatever reason, you’re pulled over and given a breathalyzer. The breathalyzer tells the officer that you’ve ingested alcohol in the last two hours. Although you’re clearly not impaired after one beer, you’re arrested for DUI simply because you’ve had something to drink in the last two hours.
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