
Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis - Noah_SannTek
Hey HN, I&#x27;m Noah, co-founder of SannTek (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sannteklabs.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sannteklabs.com</a>). We&#x27;re building a breathalyzer for cannabis.<p>I bet some of you have had the same idea cross your mind that we had: &quot;If we have a breathalyzer for alcohol, why don&#x27;t we have a breathalyzer for cannabis?&quot; We&#x27;re nanotechnology engineering alumni from the University of Waterloo. Two factors led into us deciding to pursue this idea: 1. Cannabis was being legalized across Canada and police were completely ill-prepared, so we saw an opportunity to help; 2. the science required to make this device exist was particularly interesting.<p>Alcohol breathalyzers are fundamentally a fuel cell where the alcohol in your breath sample is oxidized, which then produces an electrical current that the device then translates to BAC. For alcohol, this works because of Henry&#x27;s Law, which says that at any given temperature the ratio between the concentration of alcohol in the blood and that in the alveolar air in the lungs is constant.<p>Cannabis is a very different beast. Not only is it a non-volatile, fat-soluble molecule, but the mechanism in which THC (the psychoactive component of cannabis) appears in your breath isn&#x27;t super straight forward. Also, it is present in much lower concentrations in the breath compared to alcohol. Whereas a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% (the legal limit in most states) might result in a concentration of 208 ppm of ethanol in the breath, a similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug in breath.<p>Detecting such a low concentration is difficult, and as a result, cannabis drug use has been detected in a variety of sub-optimal ways. The state of the art is a blood draw, followed by detection of THC at a toxicology laboratory using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. While accurate and well-validated, this approach has several problems. First of all, since THC is fat-soluble it remains in a person&#x27;s body much longer than alcohol, especially if that person is a frequent user. Frequent users have been known to have detectable THC in their blood one week after beginning abstinence. These people are clearly not impaired all week but could be arrested and charged with a DUI based on many states laws across the US. Interestingly, police have the opposite problem with infrequent users. For most people, the concentration of THC in their system will decay quickly post-consumption. It takes around 2 hours (at best) for a police officer to get a blood draw from a suspect. At this point, many people will no longer have detectable THC in their system. Our device solves both these problems for police. Our breathalyzer uses an ultra-sensitive immunosensor to detect the minute concentration of THC in breath. Breath is the better medium for cannabis testing for several reasons. First of all, THC concentration in breath for both frequent users and infrequent users decays below detectable levels within 3-4 hours post-consumption and we have never detected THC in the baseline for any of our subjects. So our device does not incorrectly identify frequent users as impaired as blood testing can. Secondly, the breath tests can be administered quickly roadside, eliminating the risk of concentration decay seen with blood draws.<p>Our device comes with a reusable analyzer and a single-use disposable cartridge. It costs us $2 to make a cartridge, and police are willing to pay $20 per test. An individual will breathe into the mouthpiece, and our filter system will collect exhaled breath particles (specifically non-VOCs). Currently, we manually &quot;extract&quot; the THC off of the filter into a solvent liquid, but in the future, this will be automated using novel microfluidics. The solvent, with the captured THC, is then transferred to the surface of the sensor- which is an electrochemical immunoassay. When the THC is there, the output signal is different than when the THC is not there (happy to dive further into this in the comments if people are interested).<p>We haven&#x27;t had enough resources to run any formal trials yet to publish data, but that is changing this year. We&#x27;ve hired a contract research organization, (shout out Curebase), to help us run our very first clinical trial with blood draws. We&#x27;re going to be looking at the correlation between breath and blood concentrations, at various time intervals after consumption, to validate (or invalidate!) our preliminary in house data.<p>Selling to the police is notoriously difficult, but we&#x27;re imagining a world where there are one of our devices in every police car in North America. This weekend we exhibited at the IACP DAID and the response from the attendees was great! We have over 30 police departments across North America that have expressed interest in purchasing the device and that number is increasing every day.<p>We&#x27;re excited to hear all your questions and feedback! I encourage any questions you may have for us :)
======
woah
Sounds like it’s well-intentioned, but I’m afraid that given the incentives of
all parties involved here, and the complexity of the technology, there will be
a lot of false positives.

It’s obvious that the police will want a device that produces more
convictions, no point in disputing that.

I’m wondering if you can elaborate on what incentives your company has to
produce accurate devices, against your customer’s unstated preferences. What’s
keeping you in check? Are you worried about class action lawsuits from victims
of false positives, if it were independently proven that your device is overly
sensitive?

~~~
SannTek
You raise a good point. Interestingly, your comments run contrary to what a
lot of law enforcement officers have said to us.

In general, the police are hyper vigilant about buying only devices that are
independently validated to be very accurate. Every conversation we have had
has eventually lead to "is it NHTSA approved?". The reason for this need for
third party validation is that the police are incredibly court room sensitive.
If there is any chance a defense attorney would be able to pull out a study
showing low specificity or sensitivity for a device, the police will simply
not buy it. Third party validation gives them that guarantee.

You are right that the police want more convictions (or less time consuming
convictions), but the way they do that is by having very accurate devices that
are defensible in court, not inaccurate devices that risk cases being thrown
out. That is why making sure our device has low false positive is very
important.

~~~
neuralzen
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 testing them, and purchasing extended
warranties at that point. However their initial tests failed multiple accuracy
tests to the point that the state's lab halted testing, since it was so off. A
few months later Draeger patched the firmware and OS application (the
breath/alcohol measurement firmware being written by a single contractor in
Texas, and versioned as 0.7) and while testing looked better, it still wasn't
accurate and they just pushed it out the door for deployment...they had
already bought them, after all. I'll link the records below...they didn't even
have the correct versions of the software and firmware accounted for and
signed off, which led to other problems (and Draegar has had other problems of
accuracy in other court cases, such as Florida, but that's a side tangent).

My point is, a lot of state governments (at least in the US) spend money first
and verify later, and 'verify' can be a damnably loose term. Loose enough to
violate WAC 448-15-020 (in Washington state's case) which requires a
'reasonable degree of scientific accuracy'.

EDIT: Apparently the original link (below) is no longer available in WSP's
records, which is interesting. You can view the document via archive.org, here

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170211114622/http://www.wsp.wa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170211114622/http://www.wsp.wa.gov/breathtest/docs/webdms/Draeger/Valid_Docs/Draeger%20Validation%20Approval.pdf)

original (defunct)
[http://www.wsp.wa.gov/breathtest/docs/webdms/Draeger/Valid_D...](http://www.wsp.wa.gov/breathtest/docs/webdms/Draeger/Valid_Docs/Draeger%20Validation%20Approval.pdf)

~~~
SannTek
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 make sure you actually ran a calibration check properly and the
device passed.

We were so focused on internal methods for making the device accurate, but
maybe we should put some thought into how we can make sure the police use it
properly.

~~~
jjulius
>I guess we just naively assumed that all police precincts were as scrupulous
as those we talked to :(.

Bless your heart.

------
chadash
I 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 certain that this isn't giving false positives. But if
anything, this is step towards _more_ legalization efforts on the whole (and
fewer people driving high).

~~~
rlt
I get that breathalyzers give you a nice simple, relatively objective number
to point at, but shouldn't we be testing for actual impairment rather than the
presence of chemicals which may or may not be an indicator of impairment?

~~~
chadash
Yes, in an ideal world we would do that. But by the time we come up with a
perfect test that can be done roadside by police to determine driving
impairment, that has very few false positives and holds up in court, we'll
most likely have self driving cars and this won't be an issue anyway.

I understand that everyone reacts differently to different drugs. Dale
Earnhardt can probably be a little tipsy and still drive better than me. But
even if you are an above average driver, it's still immoral (and I think
should be illegal) to use substances that will increase your risk of killing
someone else in a car accident, even if you are having a small amount of those
substances that just brings you down to average driver levels.

Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death. It's an inherently risky
activity to be doing every day. But we've structured our society in a way that
makes it unavoidable. Given that it's dangerous even for sober people, I don't
think we should be giving people the right to drive under circumstances that
make it even _more_ dangerous.

~~~
deckar01
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...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11547199/Not-drinking-
enough-water-has-same-effect-as-drink-driving.html)

~~~
rwbcxrz
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\. The
study was funded by the European Hydration Institute

[0]: [https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-
jspui/bitstream/2134/20400...](https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-
jspui/bitstream/2134/20400/1/Watson%20et%20al%202015%20-%20Mild%20hypohydration%20increases%20the%20frequency%20of%20driver%20errors%20during%20a%20prolonged%2C%20monotonous%20driving%20task.pdf)

~~~
roguecoder
I kind of love that biased test results funded by Big Water are a thing.

~~~
big_chungus
Oh trust me, "Big Water" is very much a thing. I've met a guy who runs a coke
bottling plant; he could hardly believe his luck. They literally just run the
existing stuff dry, and it's got massive margins.

------
cbthrowaway
I've been a daily cannabis user for over a decade. I have a prescription for
this, like millions of others with prescriptions for psychoactive medications
without driving limitations. Would you send someone to prison for driving
because they took their Adderall that morning? Cannabis is not like alcohol in
regard to impairment of motor function and decision-making under the
influence. Surely the same concentrations of particulate correlate to
different levels of impairment in different individuals. Of course it is
possible for individuals to be impaired by cannabis to the extent that driving
would be dangerous. There are many factors. I'm wary of a device that purports
to determine actions as dangerous based on the the measure of some particulate
in the breath.

~~~
SannTek
Thank you for your feedback. It is really valuable to get the perspective of a
frequent cannabis user. Cannabis tolerance is definitely a huge factor in
determining whether or not someone is impaired. As a daily user, I am sure you
are fine to drive after having used cannabis (although this is not legal
advice :) ). However, people forget that there are significant tolerance
effects for alcohol as well. There are people who can blow a 0.15% (well over
the legal limit of 0.08%) and not exhibit any impairment symptoms. The key is
finding a limit that allows police to identify actually impaired drivers while
giving those with tolerance enough leeway to avoid being falsely charged. The
scariest thing for frequent users is the blood legal limits being proposed in
Canada and across the US, give that blood can have detectable levels of
cannabis up to a week after abstinence. That is why one of our big focuses is
finding a replacement for blood testing.

~~~
cbthrowaway
Thanks for your reply and engaging in this sort of discourse. I agree with all
of your points, and also feel that technology in this area can help in
conjunction with other indicators and tests to determine dangerously impaired
driving. Any improvement over the existing testing methodology and legislation
where some blood concentration possibly present from the week prior serves as
enough for a felony conviction seems well warranted!

------
4NDR10D
Great job to the founders, awesome to see more cool companies out of the UW
nano program.

Curious why all the negativity, perhaps people are unaware that cannabis
actively DOES impair driving to dangerous levels. Also, as this startup is
from Canada I'm almost certain the mindframe of the founders is to develop a
device that makes legalization EASIER, not allowing police to use it catch and
arrest people on the street who they think are high.

One issue we have been dealing with in Canada is how to regulate driving after
consuming cannabis. A zero tolerance policy for smoking + driving within
_days_ is unreasonable and thus will be ineffective. This device and the
research behind it looks like could help regulators and police catch people
who are dangerously high while not arresting those who happened to smoke much
earlier.

~~~
computerex
Do you have any proof that cannabis impairs driving?

~~~
derekdahmer
Here is a good overview of dozens of studies that have performed on subject.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/#S3titl...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/#S3title)

The tl;dr is Cannabis absolutely impairs the core skills you use when driving,
but also raises your awareness of your impairment so those under the influence
tend to drive more cautiously. The result is in simulator studies cannabis
shows a clear negative effect, but in functional studies, its more of a wash.

~~~
computerex
Please fully read and understand the resource you linked

> Experienced smokers who drive on a set course show almost no functional
> impairment under the influence of marijuana, except when it is combined with
> alcohol.

And the conclusion that the lack of functional impairment is due to increased
awareness of impairment is merely speculation and is not based on any
empirical result.

------
kenforthewin
Given that marijuana arrests disproportionally target people of color, have
you considered the ethical implications of bringing your product to market?
The accuracy of your device doesn't affect how or on whom it will be used.

~~~
core-questions
Is it that they disproportionately target PoC, or are they simply smoking and
driving more often and getting caught for it? Do we really expect every single
crime statistic to show a completely perfect, proportionate representation of
the host population's ethnic makeup?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
PoC are disproportionately pulled over by police.

EDIT: And that means you'll never get accurate numbers on consumption/offense
rates. So using those numbers is fully questionable.

~~~
core-questions
How do you know it's disproportionate? What if they're actually speeding /
breaking traffic laws / driving unmaintained vehicles more often?

------
cmrdporcupine
So many naysayers here, many of which probably aren't sharing the road with
cannabis consuming drivers in a region where it is 100% legal like here in
Canada.

I've consumed it many times, and I know how impaired I'd be behind the wheel.
It terrifies me to think of all the idiots who are probably out there driving
while stoned, pretending they're "perfectly fine."

EDIT: cool, these guys are around the corner from where I'm sitting (Google
Waterloo) in our old office building. Best of luck!

~~~
cmiles74
It's legal where I live and the drivers on the road have not changed
significantly. For those opposed to legal cannabis use, it's easy to blame any
traffic infraction on cannabis. I don't think we have data available that
backs up that hypothesis. In areas where cannabis has been legalized for
recreational use, the incidence of traffic accidents has remained the same.

[https://www.nber.org/papers/w24417](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24417)

~~~
davidw
Not opposed to legal cannabis at all, but as a cyclist, I'm _very_ opposed to
impaired driving whether it's booze, pot, or staring at a mobile phone.

~~~
cmiles74
I'm a cyclist as well and impairment via cell-phone or hands-free call has
been the most threatening for myself personally. And every parking lot ever is
liking gambling with my life.

~~~
davidw
I'd agree - but probably because it seems to be so common compared to drunk or
high people.

------
hotelsinger
A given level of THC affects some a lot more than others. There are people who
feel extremely "high" with 20 milligrams, and others who feel nothing. I do
not believe you have a solution to this problem. The only thing a police
officer should be permitted to do is give a field sobriety test. These devices
are going to create more problems than they solve.

~~~
roguecoder
Field sobriety tests are far worse than something objective like this. If a
cop has it in for you, you are going to fail the sobriety test regardless of
how impaired you actually are.

~~~
johnisgood
You can define clearly the behaviors (or lack thereof) that indicate
impairment. You can make it mandatory to record these tests in case you go to
court. These values spit out by the breathalyzers are arbitrary and they do
not take any other and crucial factors into account.

------
tj-teej
I remember reading a story about a Grandmother who ate a strong pot brownie
everyday for medical reasons and it had little noticeable effect on her.

We know there's a direct correlation between alcohol levels and driving
impairment, but I've not seen evidence for this link with THC. Are there
studies that have found this? (Please forgive my ignorance...)

If someone uses X amount of marijuana (what this tech can establish), do we
know that this will always have effect Y on the driver?

For example I know people who are heavy marijuana smokers who can smoke a
whole joint and you'd never know whereas someone right next to them will take
one puff and lose their mind.

~~~
jaynetics
Excellent point. I'm not sure how "fixed" the correlation is for alcohol
though. Someone who almost never drinks will be quite impaired at 1‰ BAC,
whereas someone who drinks several times a week might not be affected that
much. Of course this variation is comparatively small. When it comes to THC,
individual resistance really differs by orders of magnitude. Seems the body
can adapt to psychoactive agents more easily than to cytotoxins such as
alcohol.

------
elif
Do you struggle with the ethics of assisting in the arrest of, in my state,
90% minorities for a crime with dubious safety grounds?

~~~
Noah_SannTek
This is a really important topic, and we were hoping someone would bring it
up. Our device is designed to output objective results to shift the burden of
proof from subjective observation to the output of a device. We would expect
the number of false positives to decrease as a result of our device.

With that being said, we're also allocating a significant amount of our
resources to have full-time employees, with lived experiences, research the
implications of our technology on minority communities.

~~~
jcomis
What a naive answer. A more perfect device is not preventing what OP is asking
you.

------
alex_young
Are we even sure this is a problem? There seems to be no consensus on the
impact of driving on THC [0].

THC has neurocognitive impacts, but those tend to be small and long lasting.
It would be strange to tell users they can't drive for 30 days or longer.

[0][https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/26/driving-
whil...](https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/26/driving-while-high-
cannabis-study-safety)

~~~
SannTek
The science is actually pretty concrete regarding the impairing effects of
THC. Because cannabis is a schedule 1 drug, it can be very difficult for
researchers to get their hands on real world doses of THC. Instead, they use
very low doses that are not relevant to what is actually sold at dispensaries.
For a really good review of all things cannabis impairment, I would recommend
looking through the following report by the Cannabis Control Commission in
Massachusetts. A little long, but a lot of good information. [https://mass-
cannabis-control.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01...](https://mass-cannabis-
control.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FINAL-RR1-PS1-Cannabis-Impaired-
Driving_2019-1-18.pdf)

~~~
davinic
I'm shocked that an organization called the Cannabis Control Commission
published a report in favor of Cannabis Control!

~~~
SannTek
I urge you to read the report. I think it relays a very balanced accounting of
the facts. Its also a good place to find all the studies in one document, so I
don't have to send you 100 links!

~~~
davinic
I spent several minutes looking and was not able to find those links within
the 223 page report.

------
lainwashere
I'm sorry, but I'll have to state my discontent with your product. Firstly, I
question it's usability from the beginning. How accurate is it? Can you get
something similar to a BAC with it? Also how often/likely is it that a false
positive will happen? More importantly I fear that the "Cannabis Breathalyzer"
will become like a polygraph, which can't tell whether your actually lying or
not, but is merely used as a tool by police that's used against people.
Comparing Alcohol to Cannabis also isn't right. These are _vastly_ different
chemicals with different effects on people. Over ~10000 people died in 2017
from alcohol impaired driving[0], can anything remotely similar be said of
Cannabis? Don't get me wrong driving under the influence of any drug can be
dangerous, and is why on most prescription bottles you'll have a "Do not
operate heavy machinery" warning on it, but that doesn't stop everyone on
medication from driving. Prohibiting Cannabis has caused much grief in the
past that this tool, without accurate results and proper use, is likely going
to cause more harm than good. If anything it will probably just help increase
the incarceration rate to meet the status quo.

[0]
[https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812630)

------
itsangaris
Given there are countless substances that are hard/impossible to test for that
could affect someone's ability to drive, the solution to this issue seems not
to invent a new device for each substance but to come up with a more
generalized test to measure someones level of impairment — reaction times are
a good proxy.

~~~
weaksauce
Yeah, what happens when the next drug comes to legalization? A new device and
a new dubious test with a 20 dollar per test charge? Maybe a cop should have a
PlayStation and a driving wheel to test for impairment. Or a button that you
have to press when you see something on the screen.

------
nlh
Interesting idea (congrats on launching) and interesting discussion here.
Reading this thread has popped up some questions in my mind and I'm curious to
hear thoughts:

Why do we (aka society aka the police) test for specific substance quantities
at all? Really, I think, what we care about is whether someone is able to
competently perform the task of driving at a given moment.

If you are unable to perform that task, then you should be removed from the
road (and, possibly, punished).

Frankly, I don't really care whether you're drunk, high, tired, distracted
from texting or even if you're just a plain 'ol bad driver. The net result is
the same - you're an increased risk to others on (and off) the road and your
risk should be mitigated.

This gets to the root of a number of related issues - the fact that different
bodies react to different levels of chemicals in different ways, etc. etc.

If you're able to function at a given moment, fine by me. If your driving is
compromised for whatever reason (as demonstrated by a field sobriety test),
then off the road you go.

Thoughts / corrections / slap-downs?

~~~
sergiomattei
You can test and arrest for objective things, not subjective ones.

"Who can or can't drive" is a subjective criteria. Objective criteria is
someone under the influence of x or y substance.

~~~
stevenhuang
What's subjective about a field driving test?

The reason is simply that it's impractical to do so. It's easier to run a
quick BAC test, look at a number, and call it in than supervise a road test.
So you can imagine there being false positives where the person fails the test
but would otherwise drive safely.

Don't forget the true intent of these tests are to determine impaired driving.
The criteria of "being under the influence of something" has historically been
a useful analogue for that, but the question is if we can do better somehow by
testing for impaired driving directly and not 2nd order metrics.

------
itsangaris
It is documented that white & black Americans consume roughly cannabis at
roughly the rate, yet black Americans are 3.73x more likely to be arrested for
it (figure from the ACLU). How is this device not going to contribute to that
disparity?

~~~
SannTek
Thanks for the comment. Do you know if these numbers of for possession arrests
or impaired driving arrests? I have been trying to look for the impaired
driving arrest numbers but haven't had any luck yet.

One of the major roadblocks to legalization is fears surrounding public health
risks, of which impaired driving is a component. We believe that by providing
a device that makes policing cannabis impaired driving easier, we can help
mitigate some of those fears. In that case, we hope the device would decrease
possession arrests. As to whether or not our device would contribute to a
disparity in impaired driving convictions between black and white American's,
I am not 100% sure. Definitely something worth considering for us.

------
michaelmrose
If we are after impairment why don't we measure reaction time and motor
skills?

Alchol breathalyzers are orders of magnitude easier are broadly recognized as
unscientific garbage.

It would be remarkable if your research led to anything but another tool to
ruin peoples lives.

It will likely be weaponized to attack groups the police dislike like
minorities.

In short I think the world would be a better place if you stayed in bed.

------
legitster
I for one wish you the best of luck, and hope you develop an effective and
accurate product. While I may have conflicting feelings about police
municipalities and the justice system, the breathalyzer has overwhelmingly
been a good thing, and has saved countless lives by keeping the roads safe.

Questions:

\- What do you think the likelihood/timeline is that these tests will
eventually be comparable in speed and accuracy to alcohol breathalyzers?

\- Have you yet looked into the legal implications of a cannabis breathalyzer?
Does it fall under the same rules and restrictions of a standard breathalyzer?

\- How rigorously are you testing for false positives? Can you tell someone
who has taken drugs but they have worn off vs someone who is currently high?

\- Will you be making your data open source? Companies that sell proprietary
technology to police departments can notoriously complicate legal cases when
they do not disclose technical limitations or the possibilities of false
positives or negatives.

\- Will you be restricting your product sales only to regions where marijuana
is already legal? (If it's already illegal, they have other more accurate ways
of establishing possession, I presume they shouldn't need this device except
for nefarious purposes).

~~~
Noah_SannTek
Hey! We appreciate the support, and I hope that this response will highlight
the fact that we're engineers by trade, and are completely data-driven. We're
not going to be selling anything, until there's the peer-reviewed research to
back it up. Here's where we're at:

\- Speed isn't so much of a problem. Accuracy is by-far the most important
piece of this puzzle. I think it will be between 12-18 months until we see
real, robust, repeatable science to discuss the accuracy of testing in breath.

\- Legal implications of a cannabis breathalyzer are all based on two things:
1. use cases and 2. geographic location. Whether the device will be used for
pre-arrest or post-arrest is something we're working on understanding better.

\- There is a lot of work still to do on determining our false-positive rate.
We're actually going to be doing an IRB approved human trial later this year,
and we'll report back to you with our findings and the full report!

\- Regarding open sourcing our tech- to be honest, we haven't really thought
about this yet. Might be a good way improve transparency? We're definitely not
opposed!

\- That's also a great question. Our tech is most useful in places where it's
already legal. So that's where we'll start.

Hope this helps!

~~~
wolco
This could be used routinely in placed where any drug use is illegal more
easily compared to a breathe test which could result in mass arrests.

~~~
legitster
IANAL: As I understand you can't use a breathalyzer test without a warrant.

Even when driving, you have the right to revoke it (other bad things happen,
like taking your license away, but you can still refuse).

Taking a random standerby and breathalyzing him without consent or a warrant
would be wrongful search and seizure.

~~~
SannTek
Great point. In general it differs from country to country. In Australia, they
have a random testing program that allows police to breathalyze without a
warrant or probable cause. However, in the US roadside breathalyzer tests are
voluntary and police require probable cause (visible evidence of swerving,
smell alcohol on the breath, etc) to request a test.

------
abstractbarista
I think this is really cool.

I always wondered though, the way we correlate numbers to driving ability
seems sketchy. Some people take multiple large dabs of cannabis concentrate -
and they're barely feeling it. This is because they basically do this all day
every day.

Someone like that would fail this test, despite their motor skills remaining
near baseline.

It's clearly different for alcohol, because it directly increases "network
latency" (if you will) of motor control and sensory inputs.

So ultimately I would like a push to improve roadside driving ability testing,
regardless of suspected substance use. This covers sleepiness, dehydration,
etc.

~~~
dahfizz
> So ultimately I would like a push to improve roadside driving ability
> testing, regardless of suspected substance use. This covers sleepiness,
> dehydration, etc.

I definitely agree with you there. The difficulty is making it sufficiently
objective.

A cop has every incentive to arrest you, so we need to have a degree of
empiricism to the test so that cops can't use it to arrest anyone they want.

------
aripickar
Does this test for edibles? If a user has THC in their blood stream but not
from their lungs, will this show up? Alcohol is absorbed through the stomach,
passed through the bloodstream and released through the lungs. Since THC is
fat soluble, I can't imagine it interacts the same way to allow for
breathalyzer testing of people who have taken edibles.

~~~
phnofive
Per OP:

> We are actually testing edibles right now! Early results don't look so good,
> but that could be because we were using our crappy LC-MS for detection
> instead of our sensor. We'll keep everyone updated with how it goes!

I don’t understand how this gadget works, but if it’s detecting residual THC
in the lungs from smoke or vapor, I can’t see how this improves over blood
testing as a proxy for impairment; I can see how LEO would nonetheless like to
have it as it further empowers roadside judgements.

~~~
AnxietyBytes
I'm curious to see how you will test for this because the liver changes the
chemical composition of THC and the body processes it differently than if you
smoked. The THC that was eaten will show up chemically different than of it
was smoked too. This looks very promising so far!

------
alexk307
Way too many things will go wrong here, mainly that it will fall into the
hands of the police.

How does this react to other forms of cannabis ingestion (edible, topical)?

Is there science behind cannabis impairing your ability to drive like alcohol
or is this just a hypothesis that you are willing to make money off of?

Are you OK with your technology potentially targeting minorities and
continuing the war on cannabis which was based almost entirely on racial
motives in the first place?

What levels of cannabis are in your views "acceptable"?

------
h4waii
Do you mean "LED panel" in your Police-1 product page?

Can this detect THC that has been consumed by means other than smoking?
Vaporizing? Edibles? Tincture?

------
dgacmu
Please, for all of us, make sure your test set contains a wide diversity of
people - doing this testing on recruits from a local college or among friends
would make it very easy to bias your results for accuracy on particular
populations. it's critical that your device be equally accurate on tall
people, short people, white people, black people, men, women, thin, fat, and
people with various illnesses or other disorders that may affect either THC
metabolism or produce abnormal breath results (e.g., excess ketones in the
breath for a diabetic). and don't just listen to some random person on the
internet for this, find a pro.

~~~
SannTek
Excellent point. This is something we have talked about internally a lot.
Early on, we are really testing whichever people we can get but when we move
into a full clinical trial we are definitely going to design the study to be
as diverse as possible. That is why we reached out to Curebase, to make sure
the professionals were involved.

------
iamleppert
It sounds nice in theory but at such minute levels, you're going to have tons
of noise and variation from individual to individual. You'll be able to
produce a result, but it likely won't have any bearing in reality.

In order to offset the noise you'll need to increase your sample size (volume)
of air. You can't measure what isn't there, and once you get down to these
levels stuff stops becoming distributed uniformly.

Have fun becoming friends with the vendors who supply the police their other
technology. Must be a great crowd of people! You all can sit around and make
jokes about black people and discuss your cut of civil forfeitures.

------
itsangaris
Driving with an inadequate amount of sleep is almost certainly more dangerous
and ubiquitous than having consumed a normal amount of cannabis (drowsy
driving even causes more accidents than drunk driving). If we're going down
this road, is there a similar effort to enforce and test for a minimum amount
of sleep for drivers?

~~~
SannTek
In general, that standard field sobriety test (walk in a straight line, stand
on one foot, touch your nose, horizontal gaze nystagmus test) is used to gauge
that kind of impairment. There are some companies that are working on
automating the SFST, especially the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, but it is
actually really difficult to build a device that is easy and portable but is
also as accurate as a police officer.

------
VvR-Ox
Thx for letting cops and other entities bust more people with your funny
device.

Sorry I got absolutely no respect for this invention of yours as I know people
personally who suffer from law enforcement's false positives. You'll only help
them with it but I guess making money is more important today.

------
dandigangi
I'm sure this will work out for the parties who are frequently discriminated
against. Safety is a concern but you sure better prepare yourself legally for
what's coming.

------
grawprog
>we're imagining a world where there are one of our devices in every police
car in North America.

Sounds like a terrible world honestly.

~~~
Noah_SannTek
I wonder, if we got the opportunity to talk to the folks that invented the
alcohol breathalyzers, if they had the same kind of pushback? Alcohol
breathalyzers help deter drunk drivers, but there is nothing currently out
there to help deter cannabis-impaired drivers. There's definitely an education
piece associated with this.

~~~
reroute1
Maybe, but also comparing driving under the influence of alcohol with driving
under the influence of cannabis is definitely not congruent.

~~~
Noah_SannTek
This gets us to a weird gray zone of.. how impaired is too impaired? Many
would say that any level of impaired is not ok, and I would definitely agree.
Check out what the national highway traffic safety administration has to say
about this:
[https://feeldifferentdrivedifferent.org/](https://feeldifferentdrivedifferent.org/)

~~~
reroute1
-> Many would say that any level of impaired is not ok Many would also disagree, including the law which in my state allows a BAC of up to .08 to not be charged.

In general my opinion is that .08 BAC sounds reasonable and an equivalent of
MJ "could" be also. But most cases that would be a huge amount of MJ, and
still doesn't relate to the effects noticed at high consumption of alcohol. IE
I have never seen someone smoke so much they black out and cannot control
themselves. Whereas that's happening every night people go out drinking.

My view is that there is no good way to measure this universally among all
people, and MJ "impaired" driving is a non-issue compared with Drunk Driving.

Should we test people for driving on caffeiene? What about after eating too
much and being sleepy? These are effects on par and just judgement calls
people need to make. If the officer can smell weed\finds it then that seems
appropriate and enough.

EDIT: To the points below about people passing out or cops calling 911 on
themselves that speaks to the incredible variety of experience people have and
what someone might experience their first time with edibles. It's not
comparable to the effects smoking has on regular users, and not something
anyone should be doing while driving, but how do you test for that with a
Breathalyzer?

Fair points but I think this testing is only about smoking? That would seem to
give even less reason to support this kind of testing since it misses the most
egregious cases of edibles. I think anyone would agree that people in that
kind of state are in no condition to drive, but again in my experience way
outside of normal usage and not something I have ever seen. If the test took
that into account alright, but it seems like these breathalyzer would be
detecting a far lower threshold

Double Edit: "Theyre working on it" when it comes to edibles....

~~~
Fogest
Weed is also in other forms like edibles too which are quite potent. I have
seen many people who have smoked excessive amounts, or had way too many
edibles. I have personally working in the event medical field dealt with
countless people who are puking and unconscious due to weed.

It definitely is not anywhere near as bad as other drugs impairment wise, but
it definitely can be quite dangerous to drive on.

And yes, being sleepy while driving is also super dangerous.

~~~
ryanmercer
>Weed is also in other forms like edibles too which are quite potent. I have
seen many people who have smoked excessive amounts, or had way too many
edibles. I have personally working in the event medical field dealt with
countless people who are puking and unconscious due to weed.

Every now and then you also hear that a law enforcement officer got high and
called 911 panicking, googling "cop calls 911 high" brings up a couple of
Canadian officers and a Michigan officer on the first page.

 _facepalm_

If you can let that sort of judgement slip, you think there aren't people out
there getting baked and going for a drive, or now that you can easily vape
away just driving down the street vaping?

A friend recently passed away and after the funeral a bunch of us went back to
the house they grew up in to just hang out and talk about old times. Just
about everyone there was getting extremely high, forgetting what they were
saying mid sentence, taking the better part of a half hour to scratch off a
single scratch off ticket, having the goofy slouch where your head goes way
out in front of you... and then leaving, in their vehicles still quite high.

I mean, if you can't have a conversation without completely forgetting what
you were saying in the middle of a word... you can't tell me that isn't going
to affect your driving. You might just sit at a stop sign for 5 minutes
because you forgot it was your turn to go, but you also might be like "hey I'm
gonna check Facebook" while you're driving down the interstate.

If I had to choose, I'd rather be on the road with drunk drivers than high
drivers. People that are drunk often have slowed reaction time, people that
are high can easily entirely forget what they are doing and start doing
something else.

~~~
reroute1
I disagree wholeheartedly, but even if I agreed with you that doesn't mean
that this breathalyzer is a good solution:

To the points about people passing out or cops calling 911 on themselves that
speaks to the incredible variety of experience people have and what someone
might experience their first time with edibles. It's not comparable to the
effects smoking has on regular users, and not something anyone should be doing
while driving, but how do you test for that with a Breathalyzer?

Fair points but I think this testing is only about smoking? That would seem to
give even less reason to support this kind of testing since it misses the most
egregious cases of edibles. I think anyone would agree that people in that
kind of state are in no condition to drive, but again in my experience way
outside of normal usage and not something I have ever seen. If the test took
that into account alright, but it seems like these breathalyzer would be
detecting a far lower threshold

Edit: "Theyre working on it" when it comes to edibles....

~~~
Fogest
I don't see how the argument is much different than for someone having some
beers? If they have a few beers daily and blow over is this fair as it likely
is not impairing them due to a higher tolerance? How is this different than if
a regular weed user were to blow over, but also may have a higher tolerance?

The problem is that you can't really test for these tolerances, especially not
in the field. That's why it's usually better to air on the side of caution and
set a limit.

------
Stratoscope
> Whereas a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% (the legal limit in most
> states) might result in a concentration of 208 ppm of ethanol in the breath,
> a _similarly impairing_ dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug
> in breath. [emphasis added]

From personal experience, it seems to me that cannabis and alcohol have
radically different effects. How can you define a "similarly impairing dose"
when they are so unlike each other?

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Perhaps by comparing accident statistics for similarities in the two groups
and then comparing the doses of each that lead to those similar accident
outcomes?

~~~
SannTek
You can also compare performance on other standard impairment measurements
techniques, such as the standard field sobriety test, or driving simulators.
There are a lot of studies looking at the effect of cannabis on these tests,
although a lot of them suffer from really low doses. It is hard for
researchers to get their hands on real world doses of cannabis for their
studies because the drug is still schedule 1.

~~~
jsjohnst
> It is hard for researchers to get their hands on real world doses of
> cannabis for their studies because the drug is still schedule 1.

I hear this trope a lot, but considering the number of states in the US that
it’s legalized in, can you clarify why?

~~~
SannTek
For one, it makes it difficult for federally funded entities since the federal
government views it as illegal. Also, lots of funding for state entities comes
from federal sources. I have also heard of researchers having trouble with
institutional review boards that still follow the federal guidelines.

~~~
jsjohnst
Thx!

------
fanzhang
Awesome products and this makes so much sense given the rise of the cannabis
market.

I am surprised by the amount of comments here that seem like they are more or
less arguing against enforcement of DUI laws that will save lives.

~~~
butterfi
I think a lot of folks here are aware of what a double-edged sword this could
be. Getting impaired drivers off the road is a worthy goal, but these kinds of
tools have had devastating consequences when misused by authority. Accuracy is
also a major component here, and I believe all parties have acknowledged how
challenging that problem is.

------
jongold
Have you considered not selling technology to cops?

~~~
Noah_SannTek
Yes! There has been interest from safety-sensitive industries such as
transportation, energy, manufacturing, construction, and oil & gas to use our
device to help prevent life-threatening accidents in the workplace.

~~~
tom_mellior
Let's modify the above somewhat: Have you considered not selling to cops in
places where marijuana use is illegal? You have a nice traffic safety story
for Canada, but aren't you afraid that in the US police will just "randomly"
stop and test people (anywhere, not just drivers) they would like to
incriminate?

------
crawfordcomeaux
Can you create a breathalyzer for biases next so we can police the cops?

Seriously, why do we need MORE police tech when current tech is already abused
beyond belief?

Please rethink your values and reconsider the unintended consequences you
might have by feeding into such a violent system. Or take responsibility for
how you enable abuse of people using your tech.

------
rcw4256
The Draeger breathalyzer fiasco in Washington State was mentioned elsewhere in
this thread. Draeger has consistently resisted attempts to make its source
code public. Will you commit to publicly releasing the source code to your
"cannalyzer" device firmware?

~~~
SannTek
Nice name for the device! To be honest, neither of the founders are
electronics or software people, we are nanotech engineers. I don't actually
know how useful the source code would be for determining if our device is
working as intended. We would certainly release information regarding how our
device performs QC checks and have the device validated by a third party.

------
cik
Can I ask why you went this way - and what the benefits are of your specific
approach? With a friend having done this in the past - having sold his
technology, I've been more than a little interested in this.

Currently companies like Hound Labs have a breathalyzer test with high success
rates (70% according to news reports). Israel (as a country) has two different
spit tests that they've been using 'in production' (i.e the police) since
2018, both apparently in the 80% range, and as a bonus handles 5 different
types of narcotics. Then there's the Drager DrugTest 5000, already deployed
with law enforcement agencies at (apparently) a very high success rate.

~~~
SannTek
Good question, especially regarding the DrugTest 5000

There are definitely some clear competitors in this space, but we feel that
non of them have really been able to address the needs of the market.

Ill start with the Draeger because it is close to my heart. This is the device
that has been approved in Canada for roadside screening. This was such a
massive mistake. The government gave out tons of funding for police precincts
to buy these so of course they did. However, they simply are not being used. I
spoke with the drug recognition expert at the first ever police precinct in
Canada to buy these devices. They bought two, and the day after the Captain of
the precinct told him not to use them. He put them under his desk and they
have been there ever since. The problem with the DrugTest 5000 is it is the
size of a microwave, needs to be on a level surface, and has accuracy issues
especially with cannabis. And really, police officers hate having to swabs
someone's mouth for two minutes to get a sample.

With respect to other saliva tests, some are better than the Drager, some are
worse, but they all have the same kind of problems. The police hate using them
because swabbing peoples' mouths is gross, time consuming, and problematic in
terms of chain of custody for evidence. Police use them because they are the
best road side screening tests available today, but they would drop them in a
heart beat for something less invasive.

In terms of Hound Labs, we are not 100% sure what to think. We understand they
have been around for much longer, but they have not been deployed in any
police precincts in the US. I know they did some early pilots in California,
but nothing seems to have come of them. In general, our main advantage over
Hound Labs is cost and durability. Electrochemical immunosensors are very
cheap and really robust. The same can generally not be said for the
fluorescent approach being used by Hound Labs. In the end, we will see who can
provide the best product for the police, but we are fairly confident we have
the edge.

------
WhoBeI
Well, I do see a lot of potential problems with law enforced using ghettos as
an "arrest shop" and the like but that's not really on the technology or your
company. In general it's seems like a good thing, nobody wants unresponsive
people zipping around in +1 tonne metal boxes.

I'm curious about the "similarly impairing dose" though. Any good research,
actual test results, etc?

I'm assuming it's response times which make me curious how the response time
of a 25 year old post 3 hour cannabis smoker compares to a +70 year old on a
regular day and how that compares to someone at the legal limit for alcohol.

~~~
SannTek
Thanks for the comment!

Impairment is the big question surrounding the enforcement of driving under
the impairment of cannabis. It varies much more than alcohol based on BMI,
age, and use history. Here are a few good resources for understanding cannabis
impairment and how it compares to alcohol.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/)
[https://mass-cannabis-control.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01...](https://mass-cannabis-control.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/FINAL-RR1-PS1-Cannabis-Impaired-Driving_2019-1-18.pdf)

One of the most prolific researchers in this space is Marilyn Huestis.
Anything by her is really good.

------
kickopotomus
> a similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug in
> breath.

Would you mind citing a source? My understanding of why this has been a
difficult problem thus far is that THC concentration is not inversely
proportional to motor function (unlike alcohol). I.e. the drug effects people
differently and simply measuring THC concentration alone is not enough to
indicate intoxication or lack thereof.

~~~
SannTek
This comment comes from the fact that peak THC impairment occurs 1 hour post
consumption (see the NHTSA Marijuana-Impaired Driving, A Report to Congress)
and our average measurement at that time for THC in breath is around 0.00001
ppm. With alcohol, the cut off for impairment is 0.08% BAC which correlates to
around 200 ppm of alcohol. So concentration of THC at the time of peak
impairment is 0.00001 ppm whereas the concentration of alcohol is 200 ppm at
the time of peak impairment. We did not mean to say 0.00001 ppm THC = 200 ppm
of alcohol. We just wanted to illustrate the magnitude different in detecting
both molecules. I guess it was not well worded :(.

------
drewmol
>Whereas a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% (the legal limit in most
states) might result in a concentration of 208 ppm of ethanol in the breath, a
similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug in
breath.

Hi, I'm just curious if you have any reference to help elaborate on the
similarities of imparment as it relates to negative impact on a persons
abilities (especially those known to have significant impact driving
preformance)?

Is there any studied or understood similarity between the level of driving
imparment when breath samples measure 208 ppm ethanol vs 0.00001 ppm
cannabinoids (you may have mean just THC here but it's not clear to me)?

If there is a similar increase in the likelyhood of a fatal accident when
breath measures 208 ppm ethanol vs 0.00001 ppm of the devil's lettuce I'll eat
my shoe!

I don't mean to dismiss any potential impact of cannabis consumption on the
likelyhood of fatal accidents or injuries but I do believe the impact is often
greatly misrepresented when compared to alcohol consumption.

~~~
SannTek
Thanks for your comment. Here are a few research papers you might find
interesting:

Ramaekers JG, Van Wel JH, Spronk DB, et al. Cannabis and tolerance: Acute drug
impairment as a function of cannabis use history. Sci Rep. 2016;6(May):1-9.
doi:10.1038/srep26843
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/))

Veldstra JL, Bosker WM, De Waard D, Ramaekers JG, Brookhuis KA. Comparing
treatment effects of oral THC on simulated and on-the-road driving
performance: Testing the validity of driving simulator drug research.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2015;232(16):2911-2919.
doi:10.1007/s00213-015-3927-9
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748))

Micallef J, Dupouey J, Jouve E, et al. Cannabis smoking impairs driving
performance on simulator and real driving: A randomized, double blind,
placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Fundam Clin Pharmacol. 2018;(June).
doi:10.1111/fcp.12382
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828))

You are totally correct that alcohol consumption results in far more
fatalities and injuries than cannabis. A big part of this is how much more
prevent alcohol is than cannabis. While around 70% of people report having
used alcohol in the last year, only 20% report having used cannabis. However,
this is changing as more and more people are using cannabis every year. I
think we are going to see a long term trend were cannabis starts to close the
gap with alcohol, at least where the drug is legal.

------
nullwasamistake
>A similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm

Yeah this isn't going to work. The detection threshold is so low it's gonna go
off if someone is smoking weed within 500 feet. There will be so many false
positives it will practically be a divining rod.

Police already abuse sniffer dogs frequently, we shouldn't allow them to use
another unreliable tool to arrest people.

~~~
jklinger410
Also

>We haven't had enough resources to run any formal trials yet to publish data,
but that is changing this year.

So, ok. See you after the trials?

------
eof
How does your device work for people who have taken edibles vs smoking?

I am not a chemist nor biologist, but ethanol escapes through mucus membranes
and afaik, thc does not.

So, I am curious what mechanism has thc in the breath while people are
“impaired” but not while they are heavy users that haven’t had any thc for 24
hours.

~~~
SannTek
Great question. The pathway by which THC gets into your breath has not been
well studied that this point. That is one of the things we are actually trying
to enable!

In general, it appears that it is a mix of deposition directly into the lungs
and diffusion from the blood stream. Other non-volatiles, such as other drugs
of abuse taken intravenously, have been detected in breath before. I would
check out the research done by Olof Beck. He is fairly prolific in this space.

We are actually testing edibles right now, so we will know more in the coming
months.

------
dahfizz
There is some serious negativity in these comments that I don't understand. I
for one think that there is a strong need for a weed breathalyzer, and I
encourage you in your efforts.

This is a fundamental and necessary part of the legalization of weed. Some
people here are worried about the efficacy of such a device and the motives of
partied involved - and rightly so. But consider for a moment: the cops don't
need to use _any_ sort of test or device in order to arrest you if they
suspect you of smoking today. They throw you in a jail cell and let the lab do
your blood work in a couple months. And that process is very imprecise! You
could have used cannabis weeks ago, then driven totally sober, but it would
still show up in your blood tests.

------
cookie_monsta
I had no idea this was such a polemic topic. Police have been doing roadside
saliva-swab tests for cannabis, ecstasy and meth where I live for years now

[https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-
testing/](https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-testing/)

Is it because it's a breathalyser?

My personal feeling is that lumping those three drugs in together (along with
alcohol) is a blunt approach (which admittedly is often what the law favours)
- I'd much rather be sharing the road with a bunch of stoners than meth heads
or boozers, but the tendency here is towards zero tolerance for all impaired
driving, regardless of the substance

~~~
michaelmrose
It's a problem if it measures use instead of impairment especially where use
is legal even more so if use is medical.

You'd find it pretty stupid if a breathalyzer sunk your life where you had a
beer yesterday or 2 oz of beer 30 minutes ago.

~~~
sjy
Some of the Australian jurisdictions in which mobile drug testing has been
implemented don't see this as a problem: as well as driving while impaired,
there is a separate offence for having illicit drugs in your system which is
designed for cases where the user may not actually be impaired [1] [2].

[1]: [https://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/publications/factsheets-
and-...](https://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/publications/factsheets-and-
resources/drugs,-driving-and-you-pamphlet)

[2]: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-06/nsw-announces-drug-
dr...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-06/nsw-announces-drug-drive-law-
crackdown/11083452)

~~~
michaelmrose
You don't see an issue with this? The people have an obvious vested interest
in ensuring people aren't driving impaired. This is why we effectively are
able to justify effectively searching your body for things that we have
justifiable reason to believe may exist and might cause you to accidentally
murder your fellow citizen with your car.

Absent the motive of impairment how do we justify such a search when we
wouldn't allow such a thing in your house or on the sidewalk? Presumably
Australia does because its notions of civil rights are about as interesting as
Alabama's notion of reproductive freedom but do you?

------
throwaway122378
Sounds interesting. What differentiates your product from others on the
market? For example
[http://www.cannabixtechnologies.com/](http://www.cannabixtechnologies.com/)

~~~
SannTek
Great question.

The two main competitors to our product is Hound Labs and Cannabix (the one
you linked). Our main advantages over these two companies are cost and
durability (which is kind of a proxy for portability). These advantages mostly
stem from our choice of technology for our sensor. Electrochemical
immunosensors are very cheap and also do not require any delicate components.
Hound Labs is using an fluorescent approach while Cannabix is using something
called FAIMS. FAIMS especially is an incredibly complex and expensive
technology that isn't really suited to the roadside.

There is a world in which our product is used for screening out in the field
and the Cannabix product is used back at the station for more accurate
testing. Our companies do have some compatibility that way.

------
ryanmercer
I bought an alcohol one via a crowdnfunding campaign that plugged into your
iPhone via this mythical ancient technology called 'an audio jack' years ago
called Breathometer. It was neat, it actually shipped and despite it chewing
through batteries like crazy it was neat.

I imagine these sorts of chips/sensors have coome leaps and bounds in the past
6ish years. I know that researchers at some point had developed one to monitor
blood sugar level for diabetics, this is a neat application too and with more
and more states decriminalizing marijuana I bet you guys will have a lot of
customers!

------
o_p
Why some people seem to relation this with war on drugs? If weed was legal, I
wouldnt want people driving high as a kite either, if anything this
legitimizes the use of marijuana by regulating it just as alcohol.

------
kudu
> 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?

------
JoeAltmaier
Lots of talk about the consequences of false positives.

I understand the market for these devices is partly law enforcement. But
another commercial market is devices installed in cars for habitual offenders.
For alcohol detectors, something like half a million are installed in cars in
America right now.

They have false positives, sure. Users learn to avoid substances that will
trigger a false positive, because they want to drive their car. Its a massive
inconvenience, but instead of a jail term, they are back at work etc driving
their car.

------
itsangaris
Given cannabis has a medicinal use for many how is fair to target it
specifically and not also hold other medications that cause fatigue &
drowsiness to the same standard?

~~~
SannTek
Fair point. I think it is mostly a question of scale. Cannabis is the second
most commonly used impairing substance after alcohol, and is becoming more
prevalent every year. It would certainly be ideal to detect every impairing
substance, but there are diminishing returns at some point.

------
Fnoord
1) You mention THC. Do you test for CBD as well?

2) What if I walk around on the train or bus station, and I inhale some
cannabis from someone who smokes? (This scenario is realistic for me.)

~~~
SannTek
Good questions.

1\. Our device does not detect CBD. It is specific to delta-9-THC. Our
understanding is that CBD is not psychoactive and the police not interested in
it.

2\. As of yet, we have not seen any results from non-cannabis users on our
device, some of whom were in the same room as our cannabis users when they
used the drug. This will definitely be a focus of future tests for us, though.
It would clearly be a huge problem if we returned positives from second hand
smoke.

------
koolba
Would this be able to track edibles?

~~~
SannTek
We are actually testing edibles right now! Early results don't look so good,
but that could be because we were using our crappy LC-MS for detection instead
of our sensor. We'll keep everyone updated with how it goes!

------
antisthenes
> Even if the driver had smoked cannabis one minute before the traffic stop,
> the driver’s blood plasma THC level would have fallen 80%-90% in the first
> hour after ingestion, and even more so after two and a half hours.

Can you source this claim from your front page? And if it is correct, how are
you making sure the police correlate impairment with THC levels correctly?

If someone smoked 2-3 hours before driving, wouldn't even your device fail in
this case? What thresholds are you using?

~~~
SannTek
Here is the source of the 80%-90% statistic: National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. Marijuana-Impaired Driving: A Report to Congress. July 2017.

The approximate window for cannabis impairment is 2-3 hours. Our sensor is
currently calibrated to align with that window. The current threshold is
around 10 pg/mL, although more trials are required to make sure that is the
correct number.

------
morpheuskafka
Would police be looking to use this as a pre-screen, and then take a blood
test if your device reported impairment, or would they be directly using your
test in court? Would it simply output the concentration, or would you provide
added value via some sort of research/conversion chart that prosecutors can
use in court to link the breath concentration to actual impairment, since most
states don't have a statutory concentration set for marijuana?

~~~
SannTek
That depends on how the research and regulation surrounding cannabis shake
down.

Right now, our device would just be used as a screen to see if someone had
used the drug recently. The device's results would not be taken to court and
would likely be followed up with a blood or urine tests (not ideal, but that
is what the courts accept these days).

Our device has the capacity to output a concentration, but more research into
THC content in breath and impairment needs to be done to see if that
concentration means anything. Likely, if a link between breath concentration
and impairment is established, there will be a statutory concentration set for
cannabis.

------
grayhatter
Is someone driving high dangerous?

~~~
davidw
Driving impaired in any way shape or form is dangerous.

[https://www.dailycamera.com/2016/06/09/affidavit-teen-
driver...](https://www.dailycamera.com/2016/06/09/affidavit-teen-driver-in-
fatal-crash-told-boulder-police-he-had-been-smoking-marijuana/)

~~~
firethief
As is driving unimpaired.

[https://www.stripes.com/us-army-soldier-three-others-
serious...](https://www.stripes.com/us-army-soldier-three-others-seriously-
injured-in-car-accident-in-germany-1.594535)

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
nobody should ever be allowed to drive ever then

~~~
bdcravens
Perhaps - automobile-related deaths outnumber gun-related deaths about 30:1.

~~~
krick
And that's not to mention all the deaths from diseases associated with air
pollution.

------
johnmarcus
$20 per test!!!!!!!! That's not the police's "money", it's the tax payers.
it's mine. no offense, but I feel like this is a ripoff. Seems innocent until
you realize each cop could easily blow through (pun intended) $1,000 of my tax
payer money in a quick evening and maybe if we are lucky catch 1 "bad guy".
That's a lot of my tax dollars to make you rich, too much if you ask me.

------
cphoover
Aren't alcohol breathalyzers notoriously unreliable?

~~~
sigstoat
the field units are garbage. the big thing back at the station that's what
will be used to provide data for the trial can be just fine if properly
maintained.

------
owlninja
I think this is great idea, congrats. What about testing in the workplace? It
has always bothered me that someone could fail a drug test for weed at work
even if they hadn't smoked in 2 weeks, but someone can show up slightly
hungover and be 'fine'. I would find it acceptable if you had some accident
and they could test that you were under the influence right then.

~~~
SannTek
Great idea!

We have actually been talking to a lot of TPAs (the organizations that do drug
testing for industry). We have some interest, but unfortunately a lot of
employers still have a stigma against cannabis. They are happy failing people
for using the drug on the weekend because they really don't want drug users
working for them. Hopefully this gets challenged in court soon, but until then
we will need to do some educating.

------
scottlocklin
1) As others have repeatedly asked: does it work if you eat a pot brownie, or
is it based on smoking only?

2) What do "nanotech engineers" study in school that makes them qualified to
manufacture something like this? Is that like a $2 word for a chemist?

Good luck with your launch.

------
iguana
How confident are you that the results will indicate a level of impairment,
rather than a particular concentration of THC?

Other substances contained in cannabis have significant synergistic effects
with THC; are you going to look for other cannabinoids and the presence of
terpenes?

~~~
SannTek
Confident that it will indicate, not necessarily confident that it will
correlate (if that makes sense). The impairment window is approximately 2-3
hours post consumption. We can calibrate our sensor to have a threshold of
detection that only triggers a positive if you smoked 2-3 hours ago. However,
it is not clear that a higher concentration on our device would indicate
higher impairment. More research is required to determine that.

------
stochastic_monk
One question: with such varying cannabis tolerances, how one reason about
impairment levels at a given concentration? I think it’s well-intentioned, but
expect this to primarily overestimate impairment of chronic users and
underestimate that of naive users.

~~~
SannTek
Good question.

Our current device only screens to see if you used cannabis in the last 2-4
hours (which aligns with the approximate window of impairment for cannabis).
It does not actually assign a degree of impairment to a particular
concentration (ie if our device returns a higher concentration, it does not
necessarily more impaired).

This is actually good for chronic users. In all our tests, both frequent and
infrequent users had no detectable trace of THC left in their breath 3 hours
after consumption. Therefore, our test does not discriminate between frequent
and infrequent users in the same way blood does.

------
polyomino
Would this detect edibles?

------
mbritton72
Personally, I feel the difference between alcohol and marijuana intoxication
to be so different, it doesn't necessarily follow that the same rules should
apply.

------
jowday
Dumb question - does the way the cannabis was consumed affect the accuracy of
the device? Does it work as well for edible cannabis as it does for a joint?

~~~
SannTek
Great question actually.

The device works well for vaped and smoked cannabis. We generally see peak
concentration 10 minutes after smoking, and a steady decay to 0 over the next
few hours.

We are in the midst of testing for edibles. What we would expect is that the
concentration is lower and that peak concentration should occur 1-2 hours post
consumption, followed by decay. We will see how it goes!

------
pcmaffey
How are you accounting for different consumption forms?

~~~
SannTek
We have tested vaping and smoking. We are in the process of testing tablets
and edibles. Definitely a very important part of the equation.

------
segmondy
You wrote "Selling to the police is notoriously difficult" Why is this so? How
do you overcome it? Who makes the purchasing decision?

~~~
SannTek
Several reasons. To begin, police have very long sales cycles that are tied to
their funding schedule. You need to make sure that you engage with them when
their budget has been assigned but they haven't allocated to much of it. They
also are very stringent in making sure they buy the correct product. For most
large purchases, they do what is called a "request for tenure" in which
companies bid on a contract with a given police department, so you have to
almost always compete directly with alternatives to your product.

Purchasing decision are distributive differently depending on the size of the
police precinct, but in general it is the Chief of Police.

------
torified
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom, we need to keep that
in mind at all times" \- Bill Hicks

------
qsymmachus
Thanks but I would rather not work for Narcs Inc.

------
freemanindia
Can you share a reference for this statement ?

"... a similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug
in breath."

------
dondawest
The problem with this entire concept is that every stoner I know is actually a
safer and more risk-averse driver while stoned.

------
longcommonname
Why go with a breath based test when a poc finger stick tests generally have
higher validity and stricter correlation ranges?

------
oth001
As it pertains to driving, how do unsafe driving laws and propable cause not
already solve this issue?

------
dondawest
The problem with this entire concept is that every stoner I know is a safer
driver while stoned.

------
cronix
Is the detectable level different for inhaled vs consumed cannabis, like
edibles?

------
thatcat
Shouldn't you need to prove that cannabis inhibits your driving first?

~~~
SannTek
There is actually a lot of peer reviewed articles supporting the fact that
cannabis impairs driving. Here are a few articles you might be interested in.

Ramaekers JG, Van Wel JH, Spronk DB, et al. Cannabis and tolerance: Acute drug
impairment as a function of cannabis use history. Sci Rep. 2016;6(May):1-9.
doi:10.1038/srep26843
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881034/))

Veldstra JL, Bosker WM, De Waard D, Ramaekers JG, Brookhuis KA. Comparing
treatment effects of oral THC on simulated and on-the-road driving
performance: Testing the validity of driving simulator drug research.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2015;232(16):2911-2919.
doi:10.1007/s00213-015-3927-9
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25957748))

Micallef J, Dupouey J, Jouve E, et al. Cannabis smoking impairs driving
performance on simulator and real driving: A randomized, double blind,
placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Fundam Clin Pharmacol. 2018;(June).
doi:10.1111/fcp.12382
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29752828))

Thanks for the comment.

~~~
thatcat
Why would pro level gran turismo driving simulator gamers use it as a
performance enhancing drug if it "inhibits driving ability"?

------
ycombonator
Can’t wait for this device. My daughter is breathing the contaminated air from
HVAC in my condo complex from all the potheads that live in the building.
Great job guys looking forward to buying this and have the property management
screen suspects.

~~~
osd
I'm sure this is just a troll post but wouldn't anyone your property
management "caught" using this device simply say they used off the premises
and that would be the end of it?

~~~
ycombonator
Not a troll just frustrated that potheads are contaminating the air in my
state. I can’t walk a mile with my kid without smelling pot in the air. The
smell and the effect of irritating my eyes is worse than a cigs smoker
standing next to me. To answer your question they could but their apartment
will smell like a pot factory once the property management goes into check.

~~~
dandigangi
Contaminating the air... k.

------
eternalny1
Well we can certainly see who smokes weed in here ... and probably who smokes
weed and drives.

I'm all for marijuana legalization but sensible tests to prevent driving while
high sound good to me.

You can't drive drunk, and marijuana can impair your driving abilities.

~~~
johnmarcus
it also enhances your awareness though, resulting in more cautious driving. No
studies have seen increased accidents in areas where marijuana has been
legalized. Should we be testing for adderall curbside as well? What other
prescription drugs would you like to restrict curbside? They all effect motor
ability, after all.

------
fourstar
How does this compete with Hound Labs (who was first to market)?

------
topherPedersen
This must be stopped.

------
egdod
Have you filed for patent protection yet?

~~~
SannTek
Yes we have. We have filed in Canada, the US, and PCT.

------
strict9
This is the first time I've ever hoped for the complete failure of a company
featured in Launch HN.

This is an ill-conceived solution to exacerbate an existing injustice: uneven
prosecution of laws in the War on Drugs.

Shame on you.

~~~
SannTek
Thanks for you comment, and we certainly respect your opinion. Being conscious
of the impact of our device on groups that have been historically target by
police is something that is on our mind a lot.

I think it is important to recognize that the way drug impaired driving is
tackled today is very subjective. Police administer an field sobriety test
that involves walking in a straight line, standing on one foot, and touching
their nose. They are then able to arrest the individual solely based on their
opinion regarding impairment, which is susceptible to their personal biases.
Our device can take out a lot of the guesswork and help eliminate biases from
the equation.

Also, our device it not assisting police it arresting people for owning or
even selling cannabis, just using it before driving. Not only that, but by
detecting only recent use, it will reduce the instances of frequent users
being improperly charged due to blood tests with large windows of detection.

~~~
computerex
Have you guys actually established a relationship between presence of THC and
actual driving impairment? I doubt it. Seems to me that you guys are just out
to make a quick buck and the way you are framing the rhetoric is just a nice
story.

At what levels of THC concentrations is driving empirically impaired and is
this measurement consistent across everyone? What evidence do you have to
support that THC impairs driving?

~~~
aianus
> At what levels of THC concentrations is driving empirically impaired and is
> this measurement consistent across everyone? What evidence do you have to
> support that THC impairs driving?

The Government of Canada has already legislated [0] that THC impairs driving
and that the per-se limit is 2ng of THC per ml of blood. I'm certain this YC
company had nothing to do with lobbying for that legislation and that it would
have been passed with or without them.

Surely if there is someone to blame for setting nonsensical limits, you should
blame the government and the hysterical voters who elect them.

[0] [https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/sidl-
rlcfa/qa2-qr2.html](https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/sidl-
rlcfa/qa2-qr2.html)

~~~
computerex
I'm not sure why you mention Canadian legislation when this product is for
America. Secondly, Canadian government setting these constraints doesn't mean
that THC impairs driving. What is their evidence? Laws aren't always supported
by science and data.

------
JohnJamesRambo
This went as well as it deserved to.

------
mola
Sounds like an enabler for a new tax

------
blackflame7000
I'm skeptical that ppm of THC correlates to "Highness" as well as ppm of
alcohol correlates to drunkeness.

------
efficax
I smell cops

------
colechristensen
Is the pro-thc crowd really so focused that they would prefer impared drivers
be untestable?

~~~
imsofuture
You're missing the point that the war on drugs is racist, oppressive,
expensive and counterproductive. Adding technology does not improve any aspect
of that.

FWIW I do not think driving high is safe at all, but I don't think it's a
serious problem either (by the numbers).

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Except your defensive "war on drugs" reaction is not really applicable here,
as this product is being developed in the context of an environment where
cannabis consumption is 100% legal (Canada).

~~~
reroute1
Actually it's still applicable regardless of legality... that doesn't change
police profiling and would still adversely affect minority groups. So instead
of more people of color getting arrested for marijuana possession they get
arrested for marijuana dui

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Racial profiling is still applicable/relevant in another form, yes. But that's
a different thing from 'war on drugs' per se.

Legalization has taken away the police's ability to target for consumption,
and removed their ability to ruin people's lives for it. That's huge. And the
gov't will now be providing a way for people to strike old possession crimes
from their record, apparently.

~~~
reroute1
Legalization does take that ability away, and to some extent this sort of
enables it. The simple solution is don't drive under the influence and you
will have no issues, but the arbitrary nature of these tests and what happens
in real life leave me feeling less than confident this would play out fairly.

------
avip
Is the sensor gnp based?

~~~
SannTek
It is not, but it does involve a gold substrate. We haven't found it necessary
to include gold nanoparticles in order to achieve the required lower limit of
detection.

------
svnpenn
The war on drugs has ruined literally millions of lives:

[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Arrests_and_incarcer...](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Arrests_and_incarceration)

with all due respect, I hope you fail miserably.

~~~
danappelxx
This is not about the war on drugs, this is about making roads safer. Driving
under the influence is illegal whether the influencing drug is legal or not.

~~~
jabits
Driving under the influence should be detected by professional law enforcement
observation. This can be easily backed up with video footage. Then if
suspected after being pulled over, tested clinically. This is not that
difficult. Even if a certain level of any substance is detected and measured,
level of impairment is not.

~~~
chadash
> Driving under the influence should be detected by professional law
> enforcement observation.

It is. I've been pulled over a few times in my life. Never had a breathalyzer
test done, because they assumed (correctly) that I hadn't been drinking. But
human observation is far from perfect. And even harder to defend in court.

> Then if suspected after being pulled over, tested clinically. This is not
> that difficult.

What does "tested clinically" mean. If you mean a breathalyzer for cannabis,
well then that's what this is. If you mean a blood test, well, it's pretty
hard to get someone to a lab in time to detect meaningful levels of THC from
recent smoking, as the poster of the Launch HN notes. It _is_ pretty
difficult.

> Even if a certain level of any substance is detected and measured, level of
> impairment is not.

This is tricky. As with alcohol, different people have different tolerances.
Some people can have one drink and feel tipsy, others don't feel it at all. So
we set a legal limit for how much alcohol you can have in your blood,
regardless of how you feel. You have to draw the line somewhere and we've
decided as a society to set it at a point that's more conservative in order to
reduce accidents related to drunk driving. And there are plenty of drunk
driving accidents. This would do the same thing with pot. Yes, you might feel
perfectly fine, but I don't want your subjective opinion of how well you think
you can drive under the influence of marijuana to be the determining factor in
whether we let you drive after smoking pot or not. If you want to smoke, stay
put or take an uber.

~~~
slg
>Yes, you might feel perfectly fine, but I don't want your subjective opinion
of how well you think you can drive under the influence of marijuana to be the
determining factor in whether we let you drive after smoking pot or not.

Couldn't you approach the same problem by testing the capabilities of the
driver rather than testing the amount of a substance in their system (after
all there are countless substances than can impair a driver, not just alcohol
and marijuana)? Would an improved field sobriety test be a more appropriate
product than an improved breathalyzer?

~~~
chadash
> Would an improved field sobriety test be a more appropriate product than an
> improved breathalyzer?

Yes, do you have such a test?

~~~
slg
No, but I'm also not the one selling breathalyzers either. I was merely
offering a hypothetical product that people could work on that would both meet
the need this company identified and satisfy most of the complaints from the
community here.

~~~
chadash
I'm not sure what this hypothetical product would measure. Driving ability? If
so, what if it was found that that would discriminate against classes of
people? How do you gauge driving ability anyway? I would probably win a
formula one race against my wife, but she's much better at paying attention to
the road on long, boring stretches of highway. But I can't imagine that it's
easy to test for that.

Meanwhile, this product tests for something that's easy and simple. Have you
recently used marijuana? It gives a yes or no (and presumably a level of some
sort). It's not the _perfect_ test, but it seems like a fallacy to argue
against this test on the basis of a better test that doesn't currently exist.

~~~
slg
You don't have measure actual driving ability. Current field sobriety tests
don't do that. You can instead test coordination, balance, cognition, reaction
time, etc. These are the things we actually care about when we talk about
impaired driving. So why don't we test them instead of testing for one or two
specific substances?

------
sixstringtheory
Just the fact that you will be profiting off of this perceived issue, means
you have some interest in the root causes of impaired driving remaining
unsolved. Reading statements like this just tells me you have dollar signs in
your eyes:

> we're imagining a world where there are one of our devices in every police
> car in North America

Nowhere did I see a sentiment akin to this:

> we're imagining a world where people act more responsibly, driving deaths
> are reduced, etc

I think it would go a long way towards establishing more credibility and
goodwill on your part if you pledged a not-insignificant % of revenue (not
just profit) towards education, mental health and/or civil rights efforts. At
the end of the day, it is all citizens' tax dollars that will be used to pay
you, so you should do the right thing and make those dollars work for them.

You should show that you're actually using this as a step towards eradicating
the root cause, not just profiting off of the perceived problem. Probably the
best way for something like this to show it has helped society is if it
ultimately obviates its own raison d'être, because the problem has been solved
and thus the need for your palliative has vanished.

It's like a doctor prescribing opiates vs solving the underlying issue of a
patient's pain, or psychiatric patients hooked on antidepressants. I'm sure
there were plenty of execs dreaming of every pharmacy stocked with Oxy. These
things may be helpful, but only as a step towards solving the underlying
issue. When they become the end goal, people get hurt.

~~~
dahfizz
I think comments like this are incredibly harmful. There is a strong need for
this device, and this person is working to fill the need.

To also hoist the responsibility of fixing society's fundamental issues _and_
ask him/her to give up the revenue (not just profit) that they earns is
absurd. I would say that this person is doing more than their fair share.

~~~
sixstringtheory
> There is a strong need for this device

Show me. "Many people are saying" is not evidence, it's argumentum ad populum.

> doing more than their fair share

Your opinion, while noted, is disagreeable to me.

~~~
dahfizz
What needs to be shown? It is well known that cannabis use while driving is
both very common and very dangerous[1]. Or are you trying to argue that
breathalyzers are not needed to combat this problem? I would argue that the
absence of these devices has caused a great deal of damage to the innocent
while making it difficult to detect and punish the guilty[2].

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836260/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836260/)
[2]
[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5914a293e4b030d4f1f0f5ed](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5914a293e4b030d4f1f0f5ed)

------
Edmond
_First you sell them the weed

_ Then you sell them the breathalyzer

*I am waiting for the next YC startup batch with the rehab app.

------
lightedman
This is not going to work. Just walking through a cloud someone exhales at you
would make you test positive. Being at a party would make you test positive.

Honest question, why can't companies seem to come up with ideas that don't
involve violating the rights of people?

------
patientplatypus
Lord save us from technologists with brains larger than their hearts.

------
ramadis
que gorras

