Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite a few? Would love to see stats or at least personal stories where this was the case.
Are you looking for statistics with marjiuana or impairment in general?
marjiuana curious how it compares to other drugs.
Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
331–340 of 421 posts
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#332I don't understand the negativity in many of the comments here. I'm all for legalization of marijuana, but I actually think that the inability to test for people driving high is a very reasonable argument against legalization. I generally feel that people should be able to make their own choices, but not if those choices involve driving a 3000 pound piece of metal down the highway while impaired. Yes, we need to be c…
Because alcohol has been around for a long time in the public’s consciousness, they equate marijuana with alcohol in terms of impairment and driving. They are not comparable. Test impairment, not the presence of an arbitrary chemical in one’s breath.
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admire what you're doing, and hope you can adhere to scientific integrity while developing and selling your product, but that simply isn't true. At least in Washington state. A few years ago Washington State purchased a whole bunch of Draeger 9510 (alcohol breathalyzer) units without ever having tested them. After two years of sitting unused, the warranties were going to expire and they finally got around to testin…
Thanks for the info. Definitely something we have not run into or considered yet. I guess we just naively assumed that all police precincts were as scrupulous as those we talked to :(. There is some stuff we can do, however. For instance, we can directly build the QC schedule into the device so it does not work unless you get it calibrated. We can also have QC cartridges that have a barcode that the device reads to m…
maybe we should put some thought into how we can make sure the police use it properly.
This times a million. Do not just make the device accurate, make sure it is very hard for a motivated individual to trick it into being inaccurate, in either direction. Please excuse the terminology, was learned from very elderly engineers, but above foolproof (stupidity), there is twatproof (deliberate misuse) and cuntproof (educated malice). Fully cuntproofing is very hard, but any device like this should be at least fully twatproofed, with at least some attempt at cuntproofing.
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#334Shouldn't you need to prove that cannabis inhibits your driving first?
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#335The problem with this entire concept is that every stoner I know is a safer driver while stoned.
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#336The problem with this entire concept is that every stoner I know is actually a safer and more risk-averse driver while stoned.
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of behaviors impair your driving ability. A study found that being dehydrated caused the same number of driving errors as being drunk [0]. I'm sure it would be easy to make a field sobriety test for blood water content, but they don't, because safety isn't the real reason these laws get made. It's just public pressure to enforce moral values. [0]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11547199/Not-dr...
That study [0] had so many flaws it's not even funny. 1. It only had 12 participants 2. One of those participants was excluded from the final results 3. They didn't test the participants' (or a separate group's) driving ability while under the influence of alcohol (they used a simulator, so it would have been fine), and so you really can't use the results to make any comparisons between dehydration and alcohol use 4.…
I kind of love that biased test results funded by Big Water are a thing.
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
We absolutely consider ethical implications for bringing this product to market. We currently live in a world where it's a "free-for-all", and officers establish reasonable suspicion, which leads to an arrest, without any objective evidence. We hypothesize that this is part of the reason why there's a higher number of PoC arrested. This doesn't happen with alcohol, because there is an objective device.
I'm sorry, but this is just not true. People are innocent until proven guilty. If there is no evidence, then they aren't convicted (EDIT: for the record, testimony is evidence). Adding an avenue to collect more evidence is going to cause more people to be convicted. Sure, you will probably get some people exonerated, but there is no question that you will get a larger number of people convicted. I am not going to wei…
Convictions are not the only way for a police encounter to be a problem in the United States. 70% of the local jail population has never been convicted of a crime: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2017_jail_detail.html
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#339> The state of the art is a blood draw, followed by detection of THC at a toxicology laboratory using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.
> police are willing to pay $20 per test.
Is GC/MS (LC/MS?) really that cheap?
Re: Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Texas, you receive a mandatory suspension for refusing just a breathalyzer, even if you are found to not be over the legal limit, or are never convicted of a DWI. Blood tests are then often obtained via warrant (and it's typical to have a judge "on call" to sign and fax those orders on demand)
That's utterly disgusting that the state can invade your body and take blood out with a warrant.
You agree to these things when getting a license. It's like the EULA we never read.