Professional research assistant Gray MacDonald, left, works with a volunteer to demonstrate how breath collection works in the mobile pharmacology lab, a.k.a. the Cannavan. Photos by Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder
Published:12/18/2024 12/18/2024
Law enforcement will be out in force this holiday season, with saturation patrols and sobriety checkpoints on the lookout for impaired drivers. Professional research assistants Paige Xiaoying Phillips (left) and Gray MacDonald pose for a photo inside the mobile pharmacology lab, a.k.a. the Cannavan, at CU Boulder. Yet 12 years after Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize recreational cannabis, police still lack a reliable method for detecting whether someone smoked a joint or ate a gummy recently and whether they are too impaired to drive.
Researchers at CU Boulder and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) hope to help solve that problem, using a laboratory on wheels and state-of-the-art chemistry to map the peaks and declines of a cannabis high in real time.
Their new study of 45 regular cannabis users could help lead to standardized protocols for measuring impairment at the roadside and inform development of a new generation of cannabis breathalyzers.
“The ultimate goal is to develop a reliable tool that supports fair law enforcement and helps keep our roads safe,” said Cinnamon Bidwell, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and co-director of CUChange , a lab that studies health risks and benefits of cannabis. Needle in a haystack
Since the 1950s, police have measured ethanol in breath as an indicator of alcohol impairment. With cannabis, it’s more complicated.
Unlike ethanol, which is exhaled in copious amounts in a gaseous vapor, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis (tetrahydrocannabinol or
THC) is exhaled in trace amounts via tiny aerosol particles.After consuming alcohol, a person exhales 1 million times more ethanol with a single breath than they would in 12 breaths after consuming cannabis, according to one NIST study.“With THC, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Tara Lovestead, a NIST chemical engineer who spearheaded that study.THC also lingers in tissues, making it hard to discern with blood or breath whether someone used an […]
A THC breathalyzer? CU research could lead to reliable cannabis breath test
