Police may soon be getting a new tool to combat pot-impaired driving after a Canadian company touted the first successful test of a cannabis breathalyzer outside the lab.Vancouver-based Cannabix Technologies — which also develops alcohol-based breath testing devices — said on Thursday results from a collection of breath samples from people who had either smoked or eaten marijuana products had been successfully analyzed by a third-party police department in the US for the first time.“This is a significant milestone for our marijuana breathalyzer system as we have now been able duplicate our latest quantification processes outside of our own laboratories. This marks a major step showing the ability to reproduce of our breath sample testing methods in multiple locations,” CEO Rav Mlait said in a release..Drug impaired driving offences increased 105% from 2017 to 2020 after cannabis was legalized.StatsCan.The samples from 11 volunteer stoners — 10 smokers and one who had consumed THC infused edibles — were taken on January 3 and shipped to the North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory based in Shreveport, LA for analysis.The samples were then analyzed roughly 48 hours after collection. No obvious adverse effects related to storing or shipping were observed during the process. In addition, the results at the NLCL lab in the US were similar to those uncovered at the company’s Burnaby, BC lab location..Cannabix said it represents the first-time quantification of human breath samples has been successfully conducted outside of its own labs.It also said its hand-held units “significantly” simplify lab analysis methods and speed turnaround times while maintaining accurate results. It can detect traces of THC up to four hours after consumption that better measures impairment.By comparison, existing and legacy breath and saliva testing procedures require several extraction and preparation steps prior to analysis, and testing itself can take from one to three hours per sample, which it said is expensive and impractical. Also, existing and legacy breath and saliva testing procedures tend to have inefficient, time-consuming collection methods and recoveries are still often poor. In addition to law enforcement, employers will also be able to use the new device to test for impairment in employees..It comes as cannabis-impaired driving continues to be a growing problem in this country five years after legalization in 2018.Data is limited, but according to the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics (CCJCSS), drug-impaired driving offences increased 105% from 2017 to 2020, with the highest increases in BC, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Ontario even as rates of alcohol-impaired driving continued to decline across the country.Last year, the Public Safety Commission reported 22% of Canadians ’self-reported’ that they had driven within two hours of ingesting cannabis while 13% had got behind the wheel within four hours, based on data gathered during the pandemic in 2020.In roadside surveys in five provinces, researchers found 10.2% of 7,265 randomly selected drivers tested positive for drugs — 7.6% were for cannabis — compared to 4.4% for alcohol. Overall, 12.9% were under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or both.Drug use was most prevalent among drivers aged 20 to 24 and decreased with age. Only 2.1% of drivers 16 to 19 tested positive for alcohol compared to 10.4% who tested positive for cannabis.“Compared to data from previous surveys, there has been a significant reduction in the prevalence of alcohol use among drivers, but a significant increase in the prevalence of drug use, cannabis in particular,” it said.
