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.
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!