In the United States, some states have been legalizing the use of cannabis as a symbolic green. But according to the California Highway Patrol, the number of injured driving accidents due to the cannabis effect has increased by 102% since legalization.
If the police find a car showing strange movements, if you are driving under the influence of alcohol, you can use an alcohol tester to arrest the driver and prohibit driving until you get drunk. However, cannabis requires urine tests, blood, and hair tests, and the problem was that it could not be confirmed at the site.
A research team at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a tester that can measure the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, when you exhale, similar to an alcohol tester that uses alcohol checks.
The US cannabis tester uses a carbon tube that is much thinner than a human hair and measures the amount of THC by combining THC molecules to change electrical properties. In addition, it was trained using machine learning to accurately measure THC even if it contains alcohol and other substances.
The current prototype looks similar to an alcohol tester. In the test, it was said that the amount of THC could be detected in a sample containing components such as carbon dioxide, water, ethanol, methanol, and acetone. The research team continues to test the prototype in the future, but says it is possible to commercialize it immediately.
Meanwhile, Hound Labs, based in California, has also announced that it has raised $30 million in funding for commercialization by developing a similar THC detector. Hound Labs has been developing THC detectors since 2014, and last July, a research team at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted a second clinical trial to verify the technical efficacy. The company’s detector is said to be able to detect up to 1 pg of THC in a liter, so it can identify how many hours ago a cannabis user inhaled.
However, even if you learn about driving cannabis, the standards for driving after using cannabis are not yet clear in the United States. For example, in Canada, 2-5ng THC per ml of blood is a violation of driving a car, and Colorado is similar.
However, it is said that the relationship between blood THC level and drinking status differs greatly from person to person. According to a recent report by the US Congressional Research Service CRS, there is no scientifically proven correlation between THC levels and driving disability. Even if the driver learns that he has used cannabis right now, it seems difficult to make a uniform judgment like drinking alcohol. Related information can be found here .