This is not about the war on drugs, this is about making roads safer. Driving under the influence is illegal whether the influencing drug is legal or not.
It is. I've been pulled over a few times in my life. Never had a breathalyzer test done, because they assumed (correctly) that I hadn't been drinking. But human observation is far from perfect. And even harder to defend in court.
> Then if suspected after being pulled over, tested clinically. This is not that difficult.
What does "tested clinically" mean. If you mean a breathalyzer for cannabis, well then that's what this is. If you mean a blood test, well, it's pretty hard to get someone to a lab in time to detect meaningful levels of THC from recent smoking, as the poster of the Launch HN notes. It is pretty difficult.
> Even if a certain level of any substance is detected and measured, level of impairment is not.
This is tricky. As with alcohol, different people have different tolerances. Some people can have one drink and feel tipsy, others don't feel it at all. So we set a legal limit for how much alcohol you can have in your blood, regardless of how you feel. You have to draw the line somewhere and we've decided as a society to set it at a point that's more conservative in order to reduce accidents related to drunk driving. And there are plenty of drunk driving accidents. This would do the same thing with pot. Yes, you might feel perfectly fine, but I don't want your subjective opinion of how well you think you can drive under the influence of marijuana to be the determining factor in whether we let you drive after smoking pot or not. If you want to smoke, stay put or take an uber.
Couldn't you approach the same problem by testing the capabilities of the driver rather than testing the amount of a substance in their system (after all there are countless substances than can impair a driver, not just alcohol and marijuana)? Would an improved field sobriety test be a more appropriate product than an improved breathalyzer?
Yes, do you have such a test?
Meanwhile, this product tests for something that's easy and simple. Have you recently used marijuana? It gives a yes or no (and presumably a level of some sort). It's not the perfect test, but it seems like a fallacy to argue against this test on the basis of a better test that doesn't currently exist.
It doesn't even have to be about roads, "Hey Gary, Bob needs to do some shirt laundry if you know what I mean"
Steve: "Bob, can you come see me in my office please"
has general conversation with Bob about performance and the local Sportsball team, determines he thinks Bob is high
Steve: "Bob, before I let you go back out there on the assembly line operating that dangerous equipment, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to blow into this device. You smell like you've been out there dabbing for an hour straight and I asked you what you thought about last night's Sportsball game and you just smiled and nodded for a solid 5 seconds before asking what we were talking about".
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It can also be used in prisons/jails that have work release programs, where residents are released during the day to work leading up to their release and have to come back in the evening. They already do breathalyzer and random urinalysis on these folks.
Similarly parole officers could benefit from this.
Hospitals could also use it to determine if a patient is under the influence of THC instead of something else that may cause complications with their treatment in the ER and if this can be used for THC I suspect it could have other recreational drug applications too which again, will benefit treatment in the ER when patients aren't always willing to volunteer what they are on for fear of legal implications.