A Vancouver company is developing a new tool that could help police get stoned drivers off the road.
West Point Resources has created a marijuana breathalyzer that can detect THC.
Compared to blood tests, which detect the presence of the drug for up to three days, the breath test is limited to about two hours.
“And that two-hour time period just happens to be very, very important for law enforcement,” West Point Resources CEO Rav Mlait told CTV News Channel. “Because we don’t necessarily want to know if someone has consumed marijuana several hours ago, or 24 or 72 hours ago. We’d like to know if they’ve actually consumed it very recently and gotten behind the wheel of a car.”
Kal Malhi, the co-inventor of the device, is a former British Columbia RCMP officer. He said the test will help curb “drug-and-drive” rates like the original breathalyzer did with drinking and driving.
"People are becoming very afraid to drink and drive nowadays because they feel that they will get caught and charged, but they’re not afraid to drug and drive because they don't feel that law enforcement will do anything about it," Malhi told CTV Vancouver in June.
Mlait said the device is still in the development stages, but he hopes that it will be publicly available by the fall of this year.
With a report from CTV Vancouver's Tom Popyk
