Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Technology Review) Later this year, Philips will introduce a handheld electronic device that uses magnetic nanoparticles to screen for five major recreational drugs.
Philips’ drug tester uses a cartridge containing magnetic nanoparticles and a handheld analyzer. Frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) is used to detect five major recreational drugs in 90 seconds.
The device is intended for roadside use by law enforcement agencies and includes a disposable plastic cartridge and a handheld analyzer. The cartridge has two components: a sample collector for gathering saliva and a measurement chamber containing magnetic nanoparticles. The particles are coated with ligands that bind to one of five different drug groups: cocaine, heroin, cannabis, amphetamine, and methamphetamine.
The test takes less than 90 seconds and can detect drugs at concentrations measured in parts-per-billion using a single microliter of saliva.
The combination of high sensitivity, low sample volumes, miniaturization, speed, and ease of use has raised hopes for a handheld biosensor that could perform sophisticated tests with high accuracy.
I will get Paul Armentano on the program to discuss this further. Back in January, he wrote on the subject:
Because saliva tests detect the presence of THC, not marijuana’s inactive metabolites, and have a much more narrow window of detection compared to urinalysis, advocates of the technology believe that it is far more likely than urine testing to provide evidence regarding whether someone may be under the influence of cannabis.
The article examined findings in France that saliva testing “fails to detect the recent use of cannabis over 50 percent of the time” and that “saliva testing is rarely sensitive to THC beyond one or two hours after past use, and that false positive results are not uncommon.” However, if this is new technology, these studies may not apply.
I’m conflicted about this one. On one hand, one of the biggest obstacles we face in legalization is the fear of stoned drivers. If a technology exists that will accurately detect recent and possibly impairing marijuana use in drivers, that could go a long way in removing that obstacle in the minds of many. However, on the other hand, we’re once again confusing the body’s chemical composition with a driver’s actual impairment. No matter where you set the line – anywhere from 2ng/ml to 5mg/ml – you will have people who pass the legal threshhold but are actually quite fine to drive. (I suppose you could make the same argument about .08 BAC in a drinking driver, too.)
Because saliva tests detect the presence of THC, not marijuana’s inactive metabolites, and have a much more narrow window of detection compared to urinalysis, advocates of the technology believe that it is far more likely than urine testing to provide evidence regarding whether someone may be under the influence of cannabis.
Ask yourself, do marijuana users, who can be found in the wee hours of the morning, staring at the “white noise” of a blank TV screen – off the air for hours, be competent drivers? Every druggie has laughed about having found themselves in that position.
What is this television channel in the 21st century that goes “off the air”? John, it’s called the digital transition – your old Magnavox console with the built in 8-track and turntable won’t pick up our fancy-schmancy hi-def 24-hour digital channels, dagnabbit!
John provides a cut-n-paste of a study that says pot smokers are 3 to 7 times more likely to cause an accident. He’s kind enough to provide footnotes to these esteemed scientist’s work. But John’s been hammered in his comments section, by me and quite a few well-educated people, pointing out every flaw in his argument and every deficit in his scientific claims. There is a simple explanation: John’s scientists are pure as the driven snow and our scientists are “druggies” with a self-serving agenda bankrolled by evil world dominating billionaires.
[I]n fact, those who leave comments, claim it’s just the opposite.Of course they’re users, trying to tell you that they’re fine to drive, … and they’ll refer to “studies”, proving just the opposite of what is only common sense, that using marijuana doesn’t impair drivers … so where’s the truth? [T]here are seemingly competent scientists who are also users, and will evidently produce ‘studies’ to further their agendas, and/or those who pay them, and don’t forget; behind the scenes, there are also wealthy men and organizations willing to bankroll anything to further their goal of legalization.
And the next claim will make Dr. Earleywine and every other scientist who’s ever tried to get a grant to study the medicinal properties of cannabis fall out of their chair:
These scientists, … they’re also a concern, for those attempting to find the truth. Truth is, they’re under pressure: 1) if academics - they need to be a published author, (being published in the scientific and research field means more respect and impacts tenure issues) … 2) how better to get more grant money than to produce something controversial?
Oh, yeah, the money is just flowing for controversial marijuana studies. Can’t you just stick to the standard reefer madness lines like “This ain’t your father’s Woodstock Weed”?
Understand also that the marijuana of this generation is not the same as their parents smoked!
Pot then, had a THC content of 1 – 3%. Now, the THC content is surging up to 25%. (That too will be covered in future articles.) One can expect an increase of physiological and psychological problems with higher dosages.
Sure, the flower children were all smoking barely-above industrial hemp ditchweed. That explains Laugh In, “be-ins”, massive afros, bellbottoms, and the Grateful Dead. all that lousy weak pot our parents were smoking.
I could cite the studies that show heavily-stoned drivers drive no worse than a .05 BAC driver, or that we tend to drive slower and leave more room, but also tend to wander a bit in the lane. John would just say those are druggie scientists. It doesn’t matter because nobody’s advocating for people to be allowed to drive stoned. Making marijuana legal is not going to increase any smoking and driving, because the idiots who would do that are doing that now. When marijuana is legal, police will still be able to bust drivers who demonstate impairment or poor driving.
So many of these prohibitionist fears are based on the notion that making marijuana legal will mean suddenly people will start smoking it. Out of nowhere we’ll have increased healthcare costs, lost productivity, impaired drivers, psychotic teenagers, and rampant crime. You can only buy into that if you don’t know that 22 million people are smoking pot this year, 14 million monthly, 3 million weekly. If the projected harms of legalized marijuana exist, we would have seen them by now because so many people have been smoking marijuana for so long!
Don’t smoke and drive, don’t drive impaired. It’s all we ask of beer drinkers and they are far more dangerous drivers.
Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 5:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Holy shnikes! I think my next road trip home to visit the folks just got a whole lot more fun!*
(AP) In Idaho, you can drive high as long as you can drive straight.
Marijuana users can drive legally in the state as long as their driving isn’t erratic and they can pass a field sobriety test, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that while it is illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, Idaho law doesn’t list marijuana as a narcotic.
The ruling overturned an impaired driving conviction against Matthew Patzer, 21, who was stopped for a broken tailgate light in 1998 and admitted to police he’d smoked marijuana at a party. The appeals court said Patzer could not automatically be presumed impaired; he wasn’t driving erratically and passed two field sobriety tests.
“Given the distinction drawn by the statute, there is no basis to conclude that impairment may be presumed upon admission of use of a non-narcotic drug,” the appeals court wrote.
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 11:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Daily Journal of Commerce) The sponsor of a bill to allow Oregon employers to ban medical marijuana from the workplace said on Monday he’ll keep pressing the issue, after the bill died in committee, failing by one vote. “Every session I come back, as an employer, I’ll be bringing it back,” said Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, owner of Automatic Vending Service.
The full House of Representatives voted last week on a motion to pull House Bill 3052 from the Committee on Business and Labor, where it had languished since a public hearing in March. The committee’s chair, Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley, cosponsored the bill with Hanna but could not secure the votes to get it out of committee.
The House voted 29-29 on the motion, which would have brought the bill to the House floor for a vote, bypassing the committee process. All 29 “no” votes were cast by Democrats.
In 2007, the same bill was introduced but died in committee. The bill would allow employers to prohibit workers from using marijuana during working hours or arriving at work under the influence.
“I just want an opportunity to say we can prohibit our employees from consuming or possessing (marijuana) during the work hours,” Hanna said.
Oregon business leaders want to discriminate against medical marijuana patients on the job
475.340 Limitations on reimbursement of costs and employer accommodation. Nothing in ORS 475.300 to 475.346 shall be construed to require:
(1) A government medical assistance program or private health insurer to reimburse a person for costs associated with the medical use of marijuana; or
(2) An employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace.
What Rep. Hanna and Rep. Schauffler don’t like about the law is that medical marijuana causes failures on pre-employment and random pee tests, and they want to be able to fire anyone they detect as having non-impairing THC-COOH marijuana metabolites in their system. What they don’t like is that medical marijuana patients are not medicating in the workplace, nor are they impaired at the workplace, but if businesses can’t fire patients for failing a test for non-impairing metabolites, they feel like they are “accommodating” the medical use of marijuana.
Currently there is no protection for patients’ right to work in Oregon statute or case law, but these business leaders fear that when one of them does fire an unimpaired medical marijuana patient, the patient will sue and the courts will determine they weren’t impaired and the firing was unlawful and the business will be on the hook for damages. They also fear if they can’t discriminate against medical marijuana patients, someday one will be impaired on the job and hurt someone, and the business will be on the hook for damages, even though such an occurrence has not happened in ten years of medical marijuana with over 25,000 patients. Basically, business wants to enshrine job discrimination against 25,000 citizens into Oregon law because they are afraid of lawsuits.
The simple thing to do would be to grant patients a waiver from workplace pee tests that turn up positive for non-impairing THC-COOH. But that’s problematic because businesses still want to fire /not hire the 19 out of 20 Oregonian pot smokers who use marijuana for non-medical purposes. How do you convince Peter Potsmoker that the joint he smoked at a concert on the weekend makes him an unacceptable danger to the workplace when you’ve just given a waiver to Granny Glaucoma or Emily Epilepsy who smoke a joint every night before going to bed? Allowing medical marijuana patients a pass on pee tests makes the pee tests even more indefensible and illogical than they already are.
Here is the language that was just defeated (additions in italic):
(2) Require an employer to:
(a) Accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace regardless of where the use occurs;
(b) Allow an employee or independent contractor to possess, to consume or to be impaired by the use of marijuana during working hours; or
(c) Allow any person who is impaired by the use of marijuana to remain in the workplace.
(3) Preclude or restrict an employer from establishing or enforcing a policy to achieve or maintain a drug-free workforce.
Since Oregon law is pretty murky on what constitutes “impairment”, you can bet that “impaired by the use of marijuana” means “tests positive for non-impairing THC-COOH metabolites”, and had this bill passed, employers would legally be able to deny employment to all 25,000 of Oregon’s medical marijuana patients.
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 10:12 am | By: Radical Russ
Nathan Miller from MPP informs us of some bad news from a member of the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers:
SB 5, the drugged driver bill, has been filed as Senate Floor Amendment 1 to House Bill 369. It is believed that HB 369 will be brought to a vote during the next three days, and that SFA1 will be called. The essence of the floor amendment is that it would allow for a conviction for DUI when a blood test taken within 2 hours of operation shows the presence of a controlled substance other than those few listed in KRS 218A.090(5). No impairment would have to be shown. This WOULD INCLUDE MARIJUANA and many many other substances such as adderol, ritalin, ambien, and numerous anti-depressants. By not requiring impairment, the bill would ensnare many innocent drivers. While the amendment would create a defense allowing for the showing of a prescription and compliance with restrictions, it would cause persons to be arrested, to have to post bond, to have to hire a lawyer, and go to trial in order to prove the defense.
Several other amendments to HB 369 have worsened the bill, such as increasing penalties for boating while intoxicating, and creating a gang theft section of the criminal syndicate statute which would reduce from 5 to 2 the number of persons constituting a “criminal syndicate” for theft of retail merchandise. The end result is that if 2 people conspire to shoplift, they commit a Class C felony even if the theft would otherwise be a misdemeanor.
The House passed HB 369 (before amendment) 98-0 and the Senate passed SB 5 34-1, so I am guessing that the chances of this bill making it through as amended are pretty good.
Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 5:02 pm | By: Radical Russ
NORML regrets to inform you that Senate Bill 5, an act to criminalize anyone who operates a motor vehicle with any detectable level of marijuana in their blood, has been referred to the Kentucky Senate Rules Committee.
If passed, Senate Bill 5 would mandate criminal penalties for any person who operates a motor vehicle with any measurable level of THC in their blood. This proposal would improperly impact cannabis consumers because THC can remain detectable at low levels in the blood of daily marijuana users for up to 1 or 2 days after past use. In the case of chronic smokers, THC may be detectable in the blood for even longer periods of time. (More information on this subject is available from NORML here.)
Someone who smokes marijuana is impaired as a driver — at most — for a few hours, not days. To treat marijuana smokers as if they are impaired, even when the drug’s effects have long worn off, is illogical and unfair.
In addition, Kentucky already has laws on the books targeting and prosecuting drivers who operate a motor vehicle “under the influence” of illicit drugs. Senate Bill 5 creates a separate crime of “drugged driving” that is, potentially, divorced from impairment and that could jail motorists for simply having consumed an illicit substance at some prior, unspecified date.
Please take a moment today to contact your elected officials and urge them to oppose Senate Bill 5. If your senator sits on the Senate Rules Committee then it is especially important that he or she hears from you. For your convenience, a pre-written letter will be e-mailed to your state representative when you enter your contact information below.
Tyler R. Sutton, 18, pleaded guilty this morning in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 to three counts of operating a vehicle with a controlled substance causing death and feticide, all Class C felonies.
If Judge Thomas Busch accepts Sutton’s plea with the Tippecanoe County prosecutor’s office, at least two of those counts would have to be served concurrently – meaning the former North Montgomery High School student could spend up to 16 years in prison.
Toxicology tests taken after the crash showed that Sutton had marijuana metabolites in his blood, though Sutton’s Indianapolis-based attorney, Dennis Zahn, disputed in court that the drug was present in the teen’s urine.
Indiana law requires only that narcotic metabolites be present to establish impaired driving.
Though Sutton also admitted to smoking marijuana, he said today that it was his first and only time.
The teenager was 17 years old at the time of crash, but juvenile court Judge Loretta Rush waived him to adult court in March.
Indiana is one of the states with a per se DUID statute. In layman’s terms, that means if you test positive for any drug metabolite, you’ve been driving impaired in the eyes of the law. That’s metabolites, not the actual drug, as would be the case with someone failing an alcohol breathalyzer.
In the case of marijuana, inactive, non-impairing marijuana metabolites can remain detectable in one’s system for weeks days. Tyler Sutton was no more [likely to be] an impaired driver than any other sober driver on the road; he just had the misfortune to smoke a joint a couple of weeks days prior to the wreck
[UPDATE: NORML’s Paul Armentano email’s me to say “No way marijuana metabolites are present in the blood two weeks later. Huestis’s work documented residual THC-COOH metabolite levels in blood for 72+ hours (THC and 11-hydroxy THC were purged within hours), but two weeks?
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
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American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
New device claims roadside testing for marijuana within 90 seconds
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