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!

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.

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.

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 :(.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.