Cops in California have field tested a marijuana breathalyzer, resulting in positive tests for individuals who admitted to smoking cannabis that day but not in any arrests because those who agreed to the tests by police were willfully volunteering the information as part of research for the device, according to a report by U.S. News & World Report.
Mike Lynn, CEO of Hound Labs, the creators of the device, said during the live tests, two people admitted to smoking marijuana within the past 30 minutes and other drivers admitted to using the drug within the last two to three hours. The readouts for the drivers who admitted to getting high within 30 minutes of the test were much higher than those in the two-to-three hour window.
“Basically everyone agreed because they were curious,” Lynn, who also serves as a reserve officer with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, said in the report. “We were not trying to arrest people. … Sure, we could arrest people and people are arrested every day for driving stoned, but the objective was not to put people in jail but to educate them and use the device if they volunteered so we could get the data.”
Next, the results of the tests will be confirmed with laboratory equipment to ensure they are accurate and other California police departments plan on conducting their own field tests over the next six months in order to validate the results.
Lynn hopes the device will be available to law enforcement in the first half of next year.
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