美国国家公共电台 NPR Scientists Still Seek A Reliable DUI Test For Marijuana

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STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST:

Marijuana is now legal in almost 30 states. But even in those states, it is still illegal to drive while impaired¹ by the drug. But as NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reports, that's left law enforcement and scientists struggling to find better ways to figure out who is impaired.

RAE ELLEN BICHELL, BYLINE²: This spring, 16 state patrol officers packed into a hotel conference room in Denver. After an introduction and some slides, their instructor³ cued a YouTube video - How To Smoke.

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BOBBY BLACK: Hi. I'm Bobby Black, senior editor of High Times Magazine. And today, we're going to show you how to do a dab⁴.

BICHELL: The cops, with their buzz cuts and Mountain Dews, looked curious. Some took notes. After all, they were there for a proper education about weed.

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BLACK: A bowl of water and some tongs⁵ if you're seasoning⁶ a new nail. And, of course, some shatter or wax.

SMITH: Chris Halsor started this class a few years ago, when Colorado legalize recreational marijuana.

CHRIS HALSOR: The whole point of this class is to get the officers to make correct decisions.

BICHELL: In this state and others, it's legal to be high, but it's illegal to drive while high. Right now, there's no breathalyzer that's proven to work. So it's up to officers like the ones in this room to make the call on whether someone they've pulled over has been driving impaired or not and, therefore, if they should be arrested. But a lot of them haven't been high themselves since some exploratory puffs⁷ in high school. They're lacking, Halsor says, in confidence.

HALSOR: Confidence that they're making the right arrest decision and confident that they're letting people go who really aren't impaired.

BICHELL: The students paged through DOPE Magazine, chuckled⁸ at a photo of an edible⁹ called reef jerky and ogled¹⁰ gold-plated blunts at a nearby dispensary. But the real test was sitting in the hotel parking lot in an RV plastered with bumper¹¹ stickers.

EUGENE BUTLER: Yes. Good music, good company, good weed. It all goes together.

SHARICA CLARK: That's true.

BICHELL: The four volunteers - John, Christine, Sharica Clark and Eugene Butler - had never met before, but they shared a passion for pot, especially the free kind.

CHRISTINE: You've got some kief there, too?

BUTLER: But check this out. If you guys ever want to boost your high...

BICHELL: Just to be clear, it's legal to smoke pot on private property in Colorado, so they weren't doing anything wrong. These people, including Sharica Clark, were getting high as a kite for the greater good.

CLARK: We're going to willfully smell like pot around a bunch of cops (laughter).

BICHELL: The volunteers walk into the hotel, where the officers were waiting to practice sobriety tests on them. One group started with a volunteer named Christine. She didn't want to share her last name.

A.J. TARANTINO: Have you consumed any cannabis today?

CHRISTINE: Oh, yeah.

BICHELL: A.J. Tarantino, a trooper with Colorado State Patrol, took the lead with his colleagues Philip Gurley, Tom Davis and Rich Armstrong observing.

TARANTINO: Would you be willing to do voluntary roadside maneuvers¹²?

CHRISTINE: Of course.

BICHELL: Christine did really well in math, but she didn't do well on other things like balancing, remembering instructions and estimating time.

PHILIP GURLEY: She showed multiple signs of impairment.

TOM DAVIS: Yeah, she'd be going to jail.

RICH ARMSTRONG: Or, yeah, she'd be arrested.

BICHELL: But then, the group moved on to Sharica Clark.

TARANTINO: Let's get situated¹³ here.

BICHELL: And things got a little more complicated. Yes, her pupils were huge, and Philip Gurley told her she had a tough time touching¹⁴ her finger to the tip of her nose while her eyes were closed.

GURLEY: But your balance, your counting, your alphabet - all spot on.

BICHELL: So in real life, would they have arrested her for driving impaired?

GURLEY: Yes.

ARMSTRONG: Boy, you're tough. I don't know if I would've or not, to be honest with you.

BICHELL: Right now, these officers' opinions loom¹⁵ large. If they decide you're driving high, you're going to jail. But they are just opinions.

TARA LOVESTEAD: It's too subjective¹⁶.

BICHELL: Tara Lovestead is a chemical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder¹⁷, Colo. She and her colleagues are looking for the chemical signature of a high, so that instead of relying on people to determine cannabis impairment, a standardized¹⁸ test might, one day, do the trick.

LOVESTEAD: We like to know the human error and the limitations of the human opinion and want to make it as scientific-based in fact as we can.

BICHELL: It's actually really hard to do this kind of research because Lovestead works in a federal lab and, federally, cannabis is considered a Schedule 1 substance. So even though she's in Colorado, getting a hold of a sample of THC for research purposes is just as hard as getting a hold of heroin¹⁹.

LOVESTEAD: Right. We cannot use the stuff down the street (laughter).

BICHELL: It's also a really tricky²⁰ chemistry problem. And that's because of the main chemical in cannabis that gets a person high, THC. In states like Colorado, there is a THC blood test, which can show, quote, "presumed impairment." But Lovestead and others maintain that, scientifically speaking, the test isn't reliable.

LOVESTEAD: We just don't know whether or not that means they're still intoxicated²¹ or impaired or not.

BICHELL: A leading research group found evidence of THC in the blood of frequent smokers²² up to a month after they stopped consuming. And, in other people, blood samples showed no trace of THC, even though the researchers had just watched them smoke joints²³.

LOVESTEAD: There's no quantitative²⁴ measure that could stand up in a court of law.

BICHELL: Now, people like Lovestead are setting the standards for a reliable breath test starting with the fundamental physical properties of THC. But, in the meantime, back at the hotel, this course is the best there is. And, at least, now, the officers know what pot strains like OG Kush and Skunk²⁵ Dawg actually smell like.

GURLEY: Yeah, smells like the bottom side of a rock a little bit more.

TARANTINO: Yeah. I want to smell one that's like - is there one that's fruity?

BICHELL: Rae Ellen Bichell, NPR News.