A Breath Test for Marijuana Is Around the Corner

You already know the dangers of using marijuana before driving: Marijuana seriously impairs your motor skills and clouds your perception and judgment, all of which you need to safely operate a car. That’s why it’s illegal to drive high. But lots of people don’t know this … or they know it, but figure it’s okay “just this one time.” Whatever the case, it’s breaking the law, just like driving after drinking alcohol. Driving under the influence of marijuana is a big problem. A 2007 study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found that 8.7 percent of people driving at night on a weekend had been using marijuana—4 times the percentage of drivers who had had enough alcohol to impair them. With all of these drugged drivers, police need an easy test to check if people have been using marijuana, like they have for alcohol. Unfortunately, there isn’t one—yet. A Marijuana Breathalyzer With alcohol, police can test a driver’s breath and tell if the person has enough in their system to impair their driving—a device called a breathalyzer. This works because alcohol leaves the body quickly.  This also means that the breathalyzer only measures alcohol that has been recently used. Measuring marijuana, however, turns out to be way, way more complicated. For one thing, marijuana can stick around in a person’s body a lot longer than alcohol. It can be detected in blood tests of heavy users as much as a month after they’ve stopped using it! S...
Source: NIDA Drugs and Health Blog - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: blogs