Company Says It's Built A Marijuana Breathalyzer, Wants To Roll It Out By The Middle Of This Year

from the how-much-'yes'-is-actually-impairment-tho dept

Breathalyzers have been in use for more than 100 years at this point and we still don't have all the kinks worked out. Testing equipment used by law enforcement frequently isn't calibrated or maintained correctly. Some devices have been set up improperly, which leads directly to false positives when the tests are deployed.

Unfortunately, impaired driving isn't going away. And neither are the tools cops like well enough to deploy in the field, but apparently not well enough to engage in routine maintenance or periodic quality control testing. This is already a problem for citizens, who can find themselves behind bars if the testing equipment is faulty. The problem is only going to get worse as marijuana legalization spreads to more states.

There's currently no field test equipment that detects marijuana impairment. A company in California thinks it has a solution.

By mid-2020, Hound Laboratories plans to begin selling what it says is the world’s first dual alcohol-marijuana breath analyzer, which founder Dr. Mike Lynn says can test whether a user has ingested THC of any kind in the past two to three hours.

“We’re allowed to have this in our bodies,” Lynn said of marijuana, which became legal to use recreationally in California in 2018. “But the tools to differentiate somebody who’s impaired from somebody who’s not don’t exist.”

We won't know if these claims are true until the testing equipment is deployed. And even then, we still won't know if the machines are accurate or the drivers they catch are actually impaired. Marijuana doesn't work like alcohol, so impairment levels vary from person to person. In addition, there's no baseline for impairment like there is for alcohol. That will have to be sorted out by state legislatures before officers can begin to claim someone is "impaired" just because the equipment has detected THC. At this point, the tech pitched by Hound Labs only provides a yes/no answer.

There's a very good chance this new tech will go live before the important details -- the ones safeguarding people's rights and freedoms -- are worked out. The founder of Hound Labs is also a reserve deputy for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. And it's this agency that's been test driving the weedalyzer.

The Alameda County Sherriff's Office agreed to test the Hound Breathalyzer in the field.

"What we've seen trending with the addition of the legalization of cannabis in California is that we are coming across more and more marijuana-impaired drivers," said Alameda County Sheriff spokesperson Sgt. Ray Kelly.

"It's not hard to determine if there is THC on someone's breath if they have been smoking it," Kelly said. "It's when they're ingesting it through edibles, which have become much more popular. That's extremely valuable to law enforcement."

These tests are completely voluntary and drivers who submit to them won't be criminally charged even if the device says they're under the influence. But in a few months -- if everyone agrees they're good enough to be used on civilians -- the tests will no longer be voluntary and the consequences will be very real.

Impaired driving that doesn't involve alcohol is going to increase with the legalization of marijuana. But this new tech should be greeted with the proper amount of skepticism. Breathalyzers that detect alcohol have been around for decades and are still far from perfect. A new device that promises to detect recent marijuana use just because researchers say consumption can be detected for up to three hours shouldn't be treated as a solution.

The device is stepping into a legal and legislative void with no established baseline for marijuana "intoxication." It can only say it does or does not detect THC in a person's breath. It can't determine whether the amount is a little or a lot, and no one has any guidance stating how much of a THC concentration should be considered impairing or illegal. But it's pretty much a given these will hit the roads before the law is ready for them, and that should concern drivers in every state where marijuana is legal.

Filed Under: breathalyzer, false positives, field tests, marijuana, police, testing
Companies: hound laboratories

Man Spends Three Months In Jail Because A Drug Dog And A Field Test Said His Honey Was Methamphetamines

from the another-godawful-trek-through-the-criminal-justice-system dept

Another field drug test has managed to misidentify a common legal substance. This doesn't matter to the government, which is only out ~$2. But it does matter to the non-criminals being treated like criminals because the ultra-faulty tests are even worse than K-9s at detecting actual drugs.

Field drug tests have determined everything from cotton candy to donut crumbs to drywall dust to bird poop (on the hood of a car no less!) to be illegal substances, resulting in a cascade of horrors on the innocent, starting with the arrest and criminal charges, and proceeding directly to indefinite pretrial detention and the loss of income, housing, etc. that comes with it.

Field drug tests are more "reliable" than drug dogs. I mean, to the extent that they'll more reliably generate the "probable cause" needed to search a car or arrest a person. If you're looking to boost your drug war stats, nothing's more useful than a cheap kit that can't tell the difference between narcotics and common household items.

Adding to the pathetic annals of cops upending people's lives with unreliable tests is this new twist: they're using these at ports-of-entry as well. A legal resident of the US spent three months in jail because the field test couldn't differentiate between a product created by bees and a product created by amateur chemists in a trailer park bathtub. (h/t Jeff Bonner)

After landing at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on 29 December at around 10pm, US Customs and Border Protection detained [Leon] Haughton for more than two hours before Maryland Transportation Authority Police put him in handcuffs, according to charging documents.

The bottles with gold-coloured screw tops labelled “honey” in his bag, they told him, had tested positive in a drug field test for methamphetamine.

Mr Haughton fainted. Police took him to a hospital. Then they took him to jail.

Leon Haughton is a Jamaican man with a green card. He's a legal permanent resident of the US. He often picks up honey from Jamaica during his frequent visits and brings some back for friends and family members. This time he was greeted by Customs and a drug dog. The drug dog was also unable to differentiate between honey and drugs. Having been wrong once, Customs agents decided to be wrong twice. Incapable of thinking for themselves, they let a dog and a packet of iffy chemicals declare Haughton to be a drug dealer carrying a large amount of liquid drugs.

The two erroneous results (dog, field test) were negated three weeks later when the drug lab determined the honey wasn't actually methamphetamines. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice grind slowly. The felony charges were dropped a little less than a month after Haughton was arrested. All of that time Haughton spent behind bars.

Why? Because the wheels of justice go completely off the rails once ICE gets involved. Haughton was a green card holder and that fact led ICE to issue a detainer. This screwed everything up. The detainer prevented Haughton from being released, even though a judge had cleared Haughton to be freed until his trial date. When his second bail hearing came up, he again asked to be released. The judge wanted to but the detention order possibly meant nothing more than a change of jails for Haughton.

Mr Haughton asked to be released on 24 January at his second bail review, but Anne Arundel County District Court judge Laura Robinson worried he would not appear for trial.

“The problem is I can’t let him go to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] because he would be deported potentially,” the judge said, according to a recording of the hearing. “Even if I released you, you still wouldn’t necessarily be released. You would go into federal detention.”

Haughton tried again to be released on February 5th. His lawyer pointed out the detainer was based on pending felony charges, all of which had been dropped by prosecutors. Again, the judge could do nothing. Due to the government shutdown, no one from ICE was fielding calls about dropping detainers. Since no one was available to pull the order, Haughton went back to jail.

The other hangup was the locals. Because a drug dog and field test had incorrectly determined Haughton's honey to be meth, prosecutors were still hanging on to a single misdemeanor charge. This was despite the initial lab test showing the honey was just honey. It wasn't until a second test came back with negative results that the state finally decided to drop the remaining charge. Once all the charges were gone, ICE finally decided to drop the detainer --one solely predicated on charges the state had dropped nearly two months earlier.

Sure, field drug tests do occasionally detect actual drugs. But the miss rate is too high to legitimately consider them to be the "probable" part of "probable cause." They'll never be abandoned because they're too useful. They create easy arrests and easy prosecutions. Cops like drug busts and prosecutors love anything that might result in a quick plea deal. Given the choice between an indefinite stay in jail awaiting trial and a relatively painless deal with lesser charges, even innocent people will choose the option that gives them more immediate freedom. The government sees nothing but wins when it uses cheap, unreliable tests. All it sees is the occasional error that has zero effect on itself or its personnel.

Filed Under: drug dogs, drug tests, field tests, honey, meth, police

Faulty Field Tests And Overblown Drug Raid Claims: The War On Drugs In Clay County, Florida

from the serving-and-press-conferencing dept

Yet another Florida sheriff with a penchant for publicity is using his office (and manpower) to start some garbage viral War on Drugs. Hence, every bust made by his department -- utilizing armored vehicles and deputies that look like they shop at military surplus stores -- is splashed across the department's Facebook page. Fine, if that's what gets your blood flowing, but these scenes of busts, featuring the Sheriff front and center, contain claims that just aren't backed up by the actual paperwork. George Joseph of The Appeal has the details.

The video finds Sheriff [Darryl] Daniels, who announces to the viewer that criminals must leave his county or face the consequences. The camera follows him to the house, briefly focusing on a broken window before Daniels opens the door. Standing in the raided home, Daniels takes a large swig of his morning cup of coffee and declares, “Fifteen going to jail, three big gulps.”

Despite the sheriff’s announcement, the “raid” resulted in only five adult arrests and one juvenile arrest, according to Elaine Brown, a lead records specialist at the sheriff’s office.

At best, maybe five will be going to jail. The sheriff depicts this as a raid on a "narcotics house" targeting opioids. The records obtained by The Appeal show no opioids were found during the raid. Four of the five adults were arrested for marijuana possession. The fifth was charged with MDMA and cocaine possession. But chances are those drugs might vanish along with the nonexistent opioids Sheriff Daniels proudly proclaims were taken out of circulation.

Note the line about the field drug tests performed. These have already been proven bogus. A sheriff's office spokesman informed The Appeal that the 1.2 grams of heroin and fentanyl seized during the raid turned out not be opioids after being lab-tested. But the field tests told Sheriff Daniels everything he wanted to hear.

The reliance on cheap, terrible drug field tests is part of Sheriff Daniels' drug-raiding tradition. Arrests and seizures sound great when you're dragging a camera through someone's house for a Facebook video, but when nothing holds up in court, you're left with an empty charade using citizens as clickbait.

A former deputy contacted by The Appeal points out that cheap drug tests are just another tool for abusive police work.

“The really good ones cost money, but those take away your probable cause,” he said, referring to arrests and police searches for which error-prone drug test field kits can provide legal pretext. “It’s probably the cheapest ones they could get to do the minimum standards for an investigation.”

This same former deputy also pointed out the marijuana charges were trumped up. According to reports, 35 grams of marijuana were seized during the raid, but somehow two people are being charged with possession of more than 20 grams.

Cheap tests, cheap vicarious thrills, and a whole lot of hype over drug charges that will likely dissipate into minimal punishment (if anything) once the lab tests arrive. That's how America's drug warriors roll. Sheriff Daniels rolls a little harder than most, but that's because tough-on-crime sheriffs are newscaster favorites. As The Appeal points out, Daniels has leveraged these videos to appear on national news networks and say ridiculous things like he's planning to treat all drug overdoses as homicides.

This report points out some very unpleasant things about our war on drugs. Law enforcement officials may claim to recognize drug addiction as a sickness, but they're still far more interested in rounding up users than dealers. Faulty field drug tests allow officials to exaggerate their successes (and misrepresent the amount of dangerous drugs in the community), when not allowing them to perform searches they otherwise wouldn't have probable cause to perform. They're part permission slip, part unpaid PR rep. And this constant failure of field drug tests to accurately identify drugs gets ignored but local media, for the most part, isn't willing to follow up on high-profile drug raids to correct the record. And it keeps working because many Americans love the image of "tough on drugs" officers kicking in doors and waving guns around. But, far too often, "tough" just means dumb, brutish, and unconstitutional.

Filed Under: darryl daniels, drug tests, field tests, florida, war on drugs