First Dual Cannabis and Alcohol Breathalyzer Created

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]he first dual cannabis and alcohol breathalyzer has been developed by Hound Labs, Inc. The start-up company that is venture-backed is a leader in the breath diagnostics field. This new product will allow employers and law enforcement the ability to instantly test how much tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is in a person’s system.

In an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday, Hound Labs Co-Founder Mike Lynn explained the need for this device. “In breath [where] marijuana only stays for a couple of hours there is no legal precedence yet for it,” Lynn said. “What will happen is that we give objective data to the police officer at the roadside or to the employer at the workplace that says ‘Hey that person you just measured has THC in their breath.’”

According to Lynn, the company plans on selling the breathalyzers to the public later this year. “Multiple law enforcement agencies have tested it, and we are in the process of commercializing it so that it’ll be out on the streets and in the workplace later this year,” he said. This upcoming commercialization of the product development comes after two clinical trials in Northern California.

The company announced the results from their second clinical trial with the breathalyzer on Feb. 27. The clinical trial was at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The clinical trial was led by UCSF’s Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and co-director of the Clinical Chemistry and Toxicology Laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital, Dr. Kara Lynch. Dr. Lynch and her team reached a powerful breakthrough in this second clinical trial, which shows a promising future for breath diagnostics.

“In our trials, we discovered that THC rapidly moves from blood into breath and consistently appears in breath in very low concentrations for two to three hours,” said Dr. Lynch. “The ability to capture breath and measure such low concentrations of molecules represents a significant breakthrough and we hope to continue to collaborate with Hound Labs on clinical studies to advance the field of breath diagnostics.”