Pubdate: Sun, 15 Jun 2014
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Jessica Kerr
Page: A11

RETIRED COP HELPS DEVELOP ROADSIDE BREATHALYZER FOR POT

A Ladner man is hoping to give police a new tool to help the fight
against driving under the influence of drugs.

Kal Malhi, a retired RCMP officer, has developed a roadside
breathalyzer that can test for marijuana.

"It's a very new concept that breath testing can work for drugs," he
said.

Malhi got the idea for the Cannabix Breathalyzer while reading on a
family trip to India last year.

While waiting at the airport, he came across a Swedish study about
breathtesting technology developed at Karolinska University in Solna.

Marijuana use can currently only be tested through collecting blood,
urine or saliva samples, and police have no way to positively
determine, on the road, if a driver is under the influence of drugs.

"It's hard to prove when somebody's high on drugs. The level of
convictions on drugged driving is very low."

With his extensive policing experience, which included several years
with a drug squad, Malhi was inspired to use the Swedish study results
to give police a tool, similar to a portable roadside breath test for
alcohol, to test for marijuana use. The Swedish study showed breath
samples could be collected and sent to a lab for testing.

Malhi teamed up with two doctors to try to make the idea a
reality.

Vancouver-based Dr. Raj Attariwala is the chief technology officer on
the project. He is a radiologist and nuclear medicine physician with a
background in biomedical engineering. He has worked closely with the
breath testing technology developed by the Karolinska Institute and
has several other medical device patents.

Dr. Bruce Goldberger is also on board as a technical
adviser.

A professor of toxicology at the University of Florida, Goldberger has
done extensive research on forensic toxicology and completed numerous
studies on the subject, including analysis of alcohol in breath and
the measurement of drugs in biological tissue.

The result is the portable Cannabix Breathalyzer. Malhi said it is
designed to function like a blood glucose meter, where the breath
sample is collected in one component, then fed into a second part of
the device which tests the sample and gives an immediate result.

Malhi said the device indicates if a person has consumed marijuana in
the last two hours. The drug can still show up in blood, urine or
saliva testing for several days after consumption, so even with a
positive test it is difficult for police to prove that a person was
impaired by the drug at the time of driving.

After just six months of research and development, Malhi already has
patents pending and has signed on with a medical device manufacturer
to develop a prototype.

He said he's hoping to have the Cannabix licensed in another six
months and will look at marketing it in North America.

Malhi said many people, especially the younger generation, view
driving after smoking marijuana as acceptable.

"Our society is changing our views on marijuana, it's becoming
legalized in many states. =C2=85 Young people have no fear of driving aft
er
smoking."
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