I-Team Exclusive: The Marijuana Test
Since the legalization of marijuana in California, local law enforcement says they’re seeing more impaired drivers. And, while there are some roadside tests officers use to determine whether a driver is under the influence of drugs, so far there is nothing that registers a baseline determining someone is over the limit and impaired like with alcohol.
In tonight’s I-team investigation “MarijuanaTest” Karen Devine shows how the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is teaming up with the maker of the first ever marijuana breathalyzer to identify stoned drivers and when it will be tested on Valley roads.
“We’re seeing a big increase in driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs or combination thereof and so this gives us another tool to keep our communities safe on our roadways,” said Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff.
Sniff says he’s excited about the department’s partnership with private company Hound Labs to test out a breathalyzer on valley roads that will determine the level of THC on a person’s breath. Ultimately letting law enforcement know if the person is too impaired to drive.
According to the CEO of Hound Labs, Mike Lynn, “Legislators, law enforcement, employers are all faced with really the same problem and that is how do you identify somebody who’s stoned at the moment and could be impaired and shouldn’t be behind the wheel versus the person who has residual THC in their bloodstream or their saliva or urine.”
Lynn says he saw a need for determining when a person is most impaired after smoking marijuana or too stoned to drive. He says law enforcement needs some objective data to help make that decision.
“This is totally different than all the other measurement devices out there, saliva, blood urine and what not. Only breath allows you to determine that somebody smoked in the last couple of hours,” says Lynn.
Hound Labs put their breathalyzer to the test on a makeshift track. Working with law enforcement they watched what happens when people are stoned behind the wheel and what happens to their decision making. The drivers were evaluated while sober, stoned and three hours later. They took a field sobriety test and breathalyzer.
All three hit a makeshift bicycle on the side of the track, while high.
Sheriff Sniff says, “This is really, like I say, all about correlation, if the device can track along what we normally do, and be sustained in court, whether the court accepts the practices then that builds the credibility of that device.”
And, it has a long way to go to get to that point. But, it could be useful to not only law enforcement, but to employers who want to know if an employee is stoned, not just that they have marijuana in their system, to legislators who need to create laws that balance public safety along with fairness. And, the cannabis industry that clearly doesn’t want stoned people driving yet also doesn’t want people unfairly arrested.
“But, when it comes to marijuana, any over the age of 18 can get it, they can get it from anywhere they don’t need a prescription or anything and they can use this and go out and drive their vehicles.”
Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Updike is a trained drug recognition expert or DRE, meaning he can better identify if someone he’s pulled over is under the influence of drugs. When it comes to the possibility of the breathalyzer to test THC levels in the field, he says, pairing that information with the field sobriety test would be most effective.
“If we could show that against a wide enough pool of people that we could figure out a legal limit that we could actually show impairment as we do with alcohol,” says Updike.
Hound Labs would like to start the testing of their breathalyzer in Riverside County, in 2019. According to the Sheriff, testing will be at no cost to taxpayers, the company will take care of it in exchange for law enforcement helping them perfect their technology.
“It’s part of our legal responsibility as police officers and deputy sheriff’s serving in those cities to make those roadways safe,” says Sniff.
Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is the first law enforcement agency to partner with Hound Labs. When the testing begins they may have their breathalyzer at DUI checkpoints. No one will be forced to participate. It will be optional and they won’t be making arrests based on readings during the testing period.
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