The Best Use of a Pot Breathalyzer Isn’t for Driving, It’s for Jobs
Pot breathalyzer tests, if they work, could help sort out how employers should handle legal marijuana use
Recreational marijuana use is now legal (or about to be) in 11 states and Canada. Driving under its influence is not. But if police suspect someone is driving high, they’ll have a difficult time proving it: Marijuana tests typically rely on urine samples, take days to analyze, and may only indicate that someone has used marijuana over the past days or even weeks, not whether they are actively impaired.
In response, several startups say they are building “pot breathalyzers” that will instead (eventually, they swear) deliver results about recent marijuana use, on the spot. The most obvious use for these devices is patrolling roads. But there’s another place where it could be very important to tell the difference between legal marijuana use last weekend and current impairment: your job.
While stoners like to debate whether driving high is actually dangerous (for the record: multiple meta-analyses of multiple studies say yes; one study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says not really), there’s no doubt that marijuana use is getting people fired.
