The device works well for vaped and smoked cannabis. We generally see peak concentration 10 minutes after smoking, and a steady decay to 0 over the next few hours.
We are in the midst of testing for edibles. What we would expect is that the concentration is lower and that peak concentration should occur 1-2 hours post consumption, followed by decay. We will see how it goes!
There is actually a lot of peer reviewed articles supporting the fact that cannabis impairs driving. Here are a few articles you might be interested in.
Ramaekers JG, Van Wel JH, Spronk DB, et al. Cannabis and tolerance: Acute drug impairment as a function of cannabis use history. Sci Rep. 2016;6(May):1-9. doi:10.1038/srep26843 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/)
Veldstra JL, Bosker WM, De Waard D, Ramaekers JG, Brookhuis KA. Comparing treatment effects of oral THC on simulated and on-the-road driving performance: Testing the validity of driving simulator drug research. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2015;232(16):2911-2919. doi:10.1007/s00213-015-3927-9 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748)
Micallef J, Dupouey J, Jouve E, et al. Cannabis smoking impairs driving performance on simulator and real driving: A randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Fundam Clin Pharmacol. 2018;(June). doi:10.1111/fcp.12382 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828)
Thanks for your comment. Here are a few research papers you might find interesting:
Ramaekers JG, Van Wel JH, Spronk DB, et al. Cannabis and tolerance: Acute drug impairment as a function of cannabis use history. Sci Rep. 2016;6(May):1-9. doi:10.1038/srep26843 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/)
Veldstra JL, Bosker WM, De Waard D, Ramaekers JG, Brookhuis KA. Comparing treatment effects of oral THC on simulated and on-the-road driving performance: Testing the validity of driving simulator drug research. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2015;232(16):2911-2919. doi:10.1007/s00213-015-3927-9 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748)
Micallef J, Dupouey J, Jouve E, et al. Cannabis smoking impairs driving performance on simulator and real driving: A randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Fundam Clin Pharmacol. 2018;(June). doi:10.1111/fcp.12382 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828)
You are totally correct that alcohol consumption results in far more fatalities and injuries than cannabis. A big part of this is how much more prevent alcohol is than cannabis. While around 70% of people report having used alcohol in the last year, only 20% report having used cannabis. However, this is changing as more and more people are using cannabis every year. I think we are going to see a long term trend were cannabis starts to close the gap with alcohol, at least where the drug is legal.
Nice name for the device! To be honest, neither of the founders are electronics or software people, we are nanotech engineers. I don't actually know how useful the source code would be for determining if our device is working as intended. We would certainly release information regarding how our device performs QC checks and have the device validated by a third party.
Excellent point. This is something we have talked about internally a lot. Early on, we are really testing whichever people we can get but when we move into a full clinical trial we are definitely going to design the study to be as diverse as possible. That is why we reached out to Curebase, to make sure the professionals were involved.
This comment comes from the fact that peak THC impairment occurs 1 hour post consumption (see the NHTSA Marijuana-Impaired Driving, A Report to Congress) and our average measurement at that time for THC in breath is around 0.00001 ppm. With alcohol, the cut off for impairment is 0.08% BAC which correlates to around 200 ppm of alcohol. So concentration of THC at the time of peak impairment is 0.00001 ppm whereas the concentration of alcohol is 200 ppm at the time of peak impairment. We did not mean to say 0.00001 ppm THC = 200 ppm of alcohol. We just wanted to illustrate the magnitude different in detecting both molecules. I guess it was not well worded :(.
It is not, but it does involve a gold substrate. We haven't found it necessary to include gold nanoparticles in order to achieve the required lower limit of detection.
We have actually been talking to a lot of TPAs (the organizations that do drug testing for industry). We have some interest, but unfortunately a lot of employers still have a stigma against cannabis. They are happy failing people for using the drug on the weekend because they really don't want drug users working for them. Hopefully this gets challenged in court soon, but until then we will need to do some educating.
Our current device only screens to see if you used cannabis in the last 2-4 hours (which aligns with the approximate window of impairment for cannabis). It does not actually assign a degree of impairment to a particular concentration (ie if our device returns a higher concentration, it does not necessarily more impaired).
This is actually good for chronic users. In all our tests, both frequent and infrequent users had no detectable trace of THC left in their breath 3 hours after consumption. Therefore, our test does not discriminate between frequent and infrequent users in the same way blood does.
Confident that it will indicate, not necessarily confident that it will correlate (if that makes sense). The impairment window is approximately 2-3 hours post consumption. We can calibrate our sensor to have a threshold of detection that only triggers a positive if you smoked 2-3 hours ago. However, it is not clear that a higher concentration on our device would indicate higher impairment. More research is required to determine that.
Fair point. I think it is mostly a question of scale. Cannabis is the second most commonly used impairing substance after alcohol, and is becoming more prevalent every year. It would certainly be ideal to detect every impairing substance, but there are diminishing returns at some point.
That depends on how the research and regulation surrounding cannabis shake down.
Right now, our device would just be used as a screen to see if someone had used the drug recently. The device's results would not be taken to court and would likely be followed up with a blood or urine tests (not ideal, but that is what the courts accept these days).
Our device has the capacity to output a concentration, but more research into THC content in breath and impairment needs to be done to see if that concentration means anything. Likely, if a link between breath concentration and impairment is established, there will be a statutory concentration set for cannabis.
1. Our device does not detect CBD. It is specific to delta-9-THC. Our understanding is that CBD is not psychoactive and the police not interested in it.
2. As of yet, we have not seen any results from non-cannabis users on our device, some of whom were in the same room as our cannabis users when they used the drug. This will definitely be a focus of future tests for us, though. It would clearly be a huge problem if we returned positives from second hand smoke.
For one, it makes it difficult for federally funded entities since the federal government views it as illegal. Also, lots of funding for state entities comes from federal sources. I have also heard of researchers having trouble with institutional review boards that still follow the federal guidelines.
Thanks for the comment. Do you know if these numbers of for possession arrests or impaired driving arrests? I have been trying to look for the impaired driving arrest numbers but haven't had any luck yet.
One of the major roadblocks to legalization is fears surrounding public health risks, of which impaired driving is a component. We believe that by providing a device that makes policing cannabis impaired driving easier, we can help mitigate some of those fears. In that case, we hope the device would decrease possession arrests. As to whether or not our device would contribute to a disparity in impaired driving convictions between black and white American's, I am not 100% sure. Definitely something worth considering for us.
I urge you to read the report. I think it relays a very balanced accounting of the facts. Its also a good place to find all the studies in one document, so I don't have to send you 100 links!
Impairment is the big question surrounding the enforcement of driving under the impairment of cannabis. It varies much more than alcohol based on BMI, age, and use history. Here are a few good resources for understanding cannabis impairment and how it compares to alcohol.
Thanks for the info. Definitely something we have not run into or considered yet. I guess we just naively assumed that all police precincts were as scrupulous as those we talked to :(.
There is some stuff we can do, however. For instance, we can directly build the QC schedule into the device so it does not work unless you get it calibrated. We can also have QC cartridges that have a barcode that the device reads to make sure you actually ran a calibration check properly and the device passed.
We were so focused on internal methods for making the device accurate, but maybe we should put some thought into how we can make sure the police use it properly.
The device works well for vaped and smoked cannabis. We generally see peak concentration 10 minutes after smoking, and a steady decay to 0 over the next few hours.
We are in the midst of testing for edibles. What we would expect is that the concentration is lower and that peak concentration should occur 1-2 hours post consumption, followed by decay. We will see how it goes!