Federally Funded Study Reveals Marijuana Breathalyzer Breakthrough With 3-D Printed Roadside Tool Able To Detect THC

There’s been a new breakthrough in the development of a marijuana breathalyzer, with a study partly funded by the Justice Department showing a potential pathway for a “portable, low cost” device that looks like an inhaler for asthma, built with 3-D printed material that can detect delta-9 THC without secondary lab analysis.

The study, led by Emanuele Alves at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), detailed the results of experiments meant to address the current lack of a roadside impairment test for THC similar to those utilized by law enforcement for people suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol. With more states legalizing cannabis, there’s particular “need for rapid, reliable and low-cost roadside tools,” it says.

By using 3-D printed cartridges with a “Fast Blue” dye and gelatin system, the colorimetric experiments established “foundational data” that the device can be used to detect delta-9 THC, CBD and CBN “across multiple matrix systems.”

The tool was able to detect 10-100 nanograms of the cannabinoids, which could be differentiated using color-space modeling. Specifically, the tests revealed “two primary clusters,” with evidence that delta-9 THC and CBN analytes can be distinguished from CBD analytes based on color hue.

“Overall, this project established foundational data supporting the feasibility of a portable, low-cost, colorimetric tool for detecting cannabinoids using 3D-printed cartridges and readily accessible reagents,” the study says. “While additional validation and field-oriented development are needed, these findings provide a proof-of-concept framework for future roadside or point-of-collection testing technologies.”

The Justice Department provided funding for the study and posted the results on the Office of Justice Programs’s National Criminal Justice Reference Service website last month, but the author’s findings “do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies” of the agency, it says.

“The development of a breathalyzer for the early detection of marijuana’s recent use is an important matter considering the current legal status of marijuana-based products around the country,” VCU’s Alves said. “To achieve this goal, our initial approach was to develop a portable cartridge that would be able to react with cannabinoids selectively to detect THC use, but not CBD.”

“Most THC breathalyzers in the market are merely collection devices that will need further laboratory analysis,” he continued. “Considering the working system of an alcohol breathalyzer, using a redox reaction would be risky for the THC approach as it would not be selective for the specific cannabinoids and it would give a positive result to any molecule capable of oxidizing the reagent.”

Because of the “excellent results” of the experiment in the “establishment of the foundational chemical profile needed for the development of a THC breathalyzer,” the study says, a patent application has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), with a proposed design for a future prototype.

There are three main components to the device, which the author said looks similar to inhalers for people with asthma. There’s a mouthpiece for exhaled air to be collected, a cartridge fixed to the end of the instrument where delta-9 THC particles “collide and react” and a detection system where the colorimetric reaction occurs and forms a dark red color if it’s positive for the intoxicating cannabinoid.

“The consequences and legal penalties for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol are well publicized,” the study concludes. “However, what the general population ignores is the illegality of DUI of marijuana, in combination or not with other drugs.”

“With the legalization of cannabis consumption in many parts of the USA, this lack of information from the general population has increased the risk of accidents and deaths caused by drivers intoxicated with marijuana. Due to the difficult and costly current methods available for the detection of marijuana in samples, it is vital to create and improve technologies for its detection in a fast, reliable, and in situ method for public safety and awareness.”

“The outcome of this project is the fundamental chemical foundation and the initial prototype for the development of a ∆9-THC breathalyzer,” the author said. “The device developed in this project is a portable tool to increase safety on the roads and for ∆9-THC use monitoring.”

Federal agencies outside of DOJ have also recognized the need for the THC detection technology. For example, last year the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the U.S. Department of Commerce planned a workshop aimed at facilitating “an open and candid discussion” about the development and implementation of device to test a person’s breath for marijuana impairment.

In 2023, a federally funded report by researchers at NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder concluded that evidence does “not support the idea that detecting THC in breath as a single measurement could reliably indicate recent cannabis use.”

A DOJ researcher in 2024, meanwhile, cast doubt on whether a person’s THC levels are even a reliable indicator of impairment, saying states may need to “get away from that idea.”

Scott questioned the efficacy of setting “per se” THC limits for driving that some states have enacted, making it so a person can be charged with driving while impaired based on the concentration of cannabis components in their system. Ultimately, there may not be a way to assess impairment from THC like we do for alcohol, she said.

One complication is that “if you have chronic users versus infrequent users, they have very different concentrations correlated to different effects,” Scott said. “So the same effect level, if you will, will be correlated with a very different concentration of THC in the blood of a chronic user versus an infrequent user.”

That issue was also examined in a federally funded study in 2024 that identified two different methods of more accurately testing for recent THC use that accounts for the fact that metabolites of the cannabinoid can stay present in a person’s system for weeks or months after consumption.

Also that year, researchers behind a federally funded study said they’d developed new procedures to enhance the selectivity of a popular forensic testing method, allowing better detection of delta-9 THC and its metabolites in blood.

A 2023 congressional report for a Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) bill said that the House Appropriations Committee “continues to support the development of an objective standard to measure marijuana impairment and a related field sobriety test to ensure highway safety.”

A study published in 2019 concluded that those who drive at the legal THC limit—which is typically between two to five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood—were not statistically more likely to be involved in an accident compared to people who haven’t used marijuana.

Separately, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in 2019 determined that while “marijuana consumption can affect a person’s response times and motor performance … studies of the impact of marijuana consumption on a driver’s risk of being involved in a crash have produced conflicting results, with some studies finding little or no increased risk of a crash from marijuana usage.”

Another study from 2022 found that smoking CBD-rich marijuana had “no significant impact” on driving ability, despite the fact that all study participants exceeded the per se limit for THC in their blood.

In a separate report last year, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said there’s “relatively little research” backing the idea that THC concentration in the blood can be used to determine impairment, again calling into question laws in several states that set “per se” limits for cannabinoid metabolites.

“Several states have determined legal per se definitions of cannabis impairment, but relatively little research supports their relationship to crash risk,” that report said. “Unlike the research consensus that establishes a clear correlation between [blood alcohol content] and crash risk, drug concentration in blood does not correlate to driving impairment.”

Congressional lawmakers at hearings last year also heard from representatives of the trucking industry, who called for wider use of hair-follicle testing in the industry. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), meanwhile, recommended better education for drivers.

“At time when conversations lean towards the potential reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I to Schedule III narcotic, demonstrating that this problem is likely to only grow,” said a representative for Truckload Carriers Association, “our industry in its entirety is unable to properly employ the proper test to identify habitual users and enter them into a substance abuse program and begin the return-of-duty procedures.”

The transportation industry also advised Congress in January that if marijuana is federally rescheduled, businesses want assurances that they won’t have to forgo zero-tolerance drug policies for drivers—while stressing that a key problem for the sector is a lack of technology to detect impaired driving.

The issue of marijuana-impaired driving also arose at another recent congressional hearing, with a representative of the Governors Highway Safety Association emphasizing the importance of roadside drug testing as a tool to help combat deadly car crashes.

Last year, meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a trucker who sued a cannabis company after he was fired over a positive THC test that he said was caused by consuming a hemp-derived CBD product.

Separately, a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) official recently downplayed criticism from the CEO of a drug-testing company that more widespread use of saliva-based drug testing “means truckers who use cannabis will be able to do so with near impunity, as long as they avoid a drug test for a couple of days.”

“When a donor receives a request for collection, the donor will not know if the test will be an oral fluid or urine collection until they arrive at the collection facility for a federal agency,” the unidentified SAMHSA official said in response. Not knowing whether to expect a saliva or urine test, in other words, would prevent drivers simply stopping marijuana use a few days before a saliva-based test.

Alcohol And Tobacco Are More Damaging To Users And Society Than Marijuana Is, Government-Funded Study Concludes

Alcohol and tobacco cause far more harms to people who consume them, and to society overall, than marijuana does, according to a new government-funded study.

A panel of 20 experts with professional experience with substance use issues from across Canada were asked to evaluate 16 different drugs on 10 dimensions of harm to consumers, as well as six dimensions of harm to others, scoring each on a scale of 0 to 100.

“Alcohol causes the most harm overall, with a cumulative weighted score of 79,” the study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, found. “It was followed by tobacco (45), nonprescription opioids (33), cocaine (19), methamphetamine (19), and cannabis (15).”

The analysis, which was supported with Canadian Institutes for Health Research grant funds, concluded that marijuana’s biggest harm comes not from its effect on consumers but instead is related to the illegal market.

“Cannabis’s highest weighted score was for organized criminal activity,” the paper, authored by a large team of academics affiliated with various research institutions throughout Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, says. “Though more than 70 percent of Canadians who purchase cannabis now do so through legal sources, organized criminal groups are heavily involved in the remaining illegal cannabis market, from production to distribution.”

Marijuana—which was legalized nationally in Canada in 2018 but remains federally prohibited in the U.S.—is not completely without harms to consumers, however, with the study finding that it “also scored relatively high for mental harms to users (dependence, withdrawal, short- and long-term impairment of mental functioning), ranking third in that combined category.”

When it comes to alcohol, which is federally legal in the U.S., it “ranked first in 9 of the 16 harm categories: drug-related damage to physical health, withdrawal, short-term impairment of mental functioning, long-term impairment of mental functioning, loss of tangibles, loss of relationships, injury, family and social adversity, and economic cost,” the study found.

“This analysis of drug harms in Canada found that alcohol causes the most harm overall… Alcohol was followed by tobacco, nonprescription opioids (like fentanyl), cocaine, methamphetamine, and cannabis.”

Tobacco “ranked first in 4 of the 16 harm categories: drug-related mortality, drug-specific damage to physical health, dependence, and environmental damage,” the researchers wrote.

The paper concludes by urging governments to “consider the harm—both individual and societal—caused by drugs and by the laws and regulations that govern them” when developing drug policies.

The findings about relative harms of different substances may help explain why alcohol consumption—and particularly tobacco use—have been gradually declining over recent years, and why multiple surveys and studies have indicated that more adults are opting for marijuana.

For example, recent polling shows that younger Americans are increasingly using cannabis-infused beverages as a substitute for alcohol—with one in three millennials and Gen Z workers choosing THC drinks over booze for after-work activities like happy hours.

Another survey released last October found that a majority of Americans believe marijuana represents a “healthier option” than alcohol. And most also expect cannabis to be legal in all 50 states within the next five years.

Smoking marijuana is also associated with “significantly” reduced rates of alcohol consumption, according to a recent federally funded study that involved adults smoking joints in a makeshift bar.

A study published in 2024 that looked at adults who drink cannabis-infused beverages found more evidence of a “substitution effect,” with a significant majority of participants reporting reduced alcohol use after incorporating cannabinoid drinks into their routines.

In September, an international study identified a a “strong negative association” between tobacco use and legal medical marijuana sales, indicating a “strong potential substitution effect” where people choose to use cannabis where it is allowed instead of smoking cigarettes.

Meanwhile, as the Trump administration considers moving marijuana out of Schedule I, the most restrictive category under U.S. federal law, another recent study concluded that cannabis isn’t as dangerous as its current classification would suggest.

High Marijuana Taxes Don’t Effectively Deter Use, Study Shows, Contrary To NYT Editorial Board’s Claim

There’s no meaningful evidence that imposing higher taxes on marijuana would steer people away from using it—contrary to a claim recently made by the The New York Times editorial board—according to a new scientific analysis of cannabis consumption and tax data.

In fact, raising the cost of cannabis sold at state-licensed retailers could lead people to return to the illicit market to obtain cheaper (and untested) marijuana that carries its own public health and safety risks.

The new report, authored by Ohio State University (OSU) Moritz College of Law researchers Dexter Ridgway and Jana Hrdinová, drew on nationally representative survey data from federal sources and marijuana tax rates in states that have enacted legalization to test the idea that putting a higher premium on cannabis for adults could positively influence consumer behavior and deter heavy marijuana use.

In its editorial, the board emphasized that while the federal government imposes taxes on alcohol and tobacco sales, it doesn’t do the same for marijuana—which is no surprise given that the plant remains federally illegal, as do the state-licensed shops that sell it. The board said “increases in tobacco taxes have been a major reason that its use has declined during the 21st century, with profound health benefits.”

“The first step in a strategy to reduce marijuana abuse should be a federal tax on pot. States should also raise taxes on pot; today, state taxes can be as low as a few additional cents on a joint,” the editorial argued. “Taxes should be high enough to deter excessive use, on the scale of dollars per joint, not cents.”

The idea that high marijuana taxes are causally associated with lower usage rates isn’t exactly settled science, the OSU report said, as states with varying tax rates for cannabis have seen disparate trends in consumer behavior.

“More generally, at a time when the legal cannabis marketplace is a patchwork of ever-changing state laws and industries, the overall relationship between tax rates and marijuana use rates (and especially heavy use rates) is quite unclear,” the researchers wrote.

They pointed out, for example, that marijuana is taxed at the highest rate in Washington State (43.5 percent), and the state has the sixth highest usage rate (22 percent) in the dataset. By contrast, New Jersey has the lowest tax rate (6.6 percent) and reports the lowest usage rate (14.4 percent), ranking in the bottom half nationally.

“These patterns do not imply that taxes have no effect on consumption, but they do suggest that assuming marijuana users will respond to taxation like tobacco users is overly simplistic,” the report says.

Via OSU.

Ultimately, the OSU report—which assessed 2023-2024 survey data from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—concluded that “there is no apparent correlation between marijuana tax rate and marijuana usage rate.”

“Merely looking at tax rates and usage rates ignores the myriad of other factors that can influence the rate of use, such as the maturity of the legal market, the ease of access to product affected by number of dispensaries per population, the price of the product in a given state (since marijuana cannot be traded across state lines, the way states regulate the number of licensed growers significantly affects availability/price of product) and many other factors,” the researchers said.

“The New York Times editorial soundly stressed the importance, from a public health perspective, of limiting excessive or high potency marijuana use. Additional data is needed to assess the role of tax increases to deter the riskiest marijuana uses and users, and policy progress here will likely require a broader regulatory approach, besides taxation. These 2023 data suggest no simple inverse relationship between state tax rates and marijuana use, and effective policy must account for market structure, product availability and the wide availability of illicit product.”

Via OSU.

To be sure, where the editorial board, advocates and researchers seem to align is in their shared position that the federal government’s decades-long prohibitionist policies and the resulting lack of robust regulations is a problem. States have been passively permitted to participate in the cannabis experiment without federal safeguards in place or guidance on policy issues such as cannabis tax rates or potency limits for marijuana products, for example.

The marijuana tax policy discussion has continued to play out in states and cities across the U.S. where marijuana laws are being considered or tweaked. There might not be consensus around the appropriate tax rate for cannabis, but there’s a general understanding that governments must balance revenue interests with the need to make regulated cannabis products cost-competitive with the illicit market.

The Times editorial board further argued in its piece that an “advantage of taxes is that they fall much more on heavy users than casual smokers.”

“If a joint cost $10 instead of $5, it would mean a lot of extra money for someone now smoking multiple joints a day and may change that person’s behavior,” it said in the editorial, which has faced scrutiny from multiple skeptical sources. “It would not be a big burden for someone who smokes occasionally.”

But as the OSU analysis argues, there’s “reason to fear that significantly higher tax rates for marijuana products could shift use into unregulated and more dangerous illicit markets rather than to deter or reduce problematic cannabis use.”

At the federal level, marijuana may soon be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which wouldn’t federally legalize the plant but would free up certain research barriers and allow state-licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions they’ve been barred from under Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code 280E.

That latter effect is expected to give the cannabis sector an economic boost, but because marijuana products would remain illegal to sell under federal law, rescheduling alone wouldn’t necessarily create a clear pathway for a new federal tax as the Times editorial board is proposing.

Removing the 280E penalty could also potentially bring cannabis prices down if industry operators decide to pass any of their tax savings on to the consumer.

“The federal government needs to be part of these solutions. Leaving taxes and regulations to the states threatens to create a race to the bottom in which people can cross state lines to buy their pot,” the board said. “Congress can set a floor, as it has done, however inadequately, with alcohol and tobacco, and states can build on it as they choose.”

Various congressional bills to legalize cannabis have included federal tax provisions, with specific appropriations in mind for the revenue, but none of those have advanced in the current Congress.