WHY IS IT DIFFICULT TO DEVELOP SOBRIETY TESTS FOR MARIJUANA?
Determining when someone is too high to drive is a problem that has evaded the chemists, psychiatrists, law enforcement agents and public policy makers. Scientists explained to Daily Mail Online why the most scientific tests may not be the best way to determine how high is too high and the unique chemistry that makes marijuana a drug-screening enigma. So, people with medical marijuana prescriptions, for example, who might smoke weed every day, seem totally unaffected and breezily pass a field sobriety test - which involves tests for coordination and balance, like walking the line, as well as some for memory and attention - even though they've recently ingested lots of the drug. According to Dr Richard Clark, director of the division of medical toxicology at the University of California, San Diego, marijuana may even move from these tissues back into the blood days later in 'chronic' smokers. And just to add an extra level of difficulty, the THC in increasingly popular edibles gets converted quickly to anther compound in the stomach, so a THC test might not even detect it, even when a high was in full effect.
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