Tag: the war on (some) drugs

U.S. Cops To Become Brain Scanning Marijuana Detectors

If Mass General Hospital (MGH) has its way, law enforcement officers in the United States will soon be using portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) scanners on motorists.

A recent Boston Globearticle describes fNIRS as a “breakthrough” in detecting marijuana impairment.

“Boston researchers say they’ve developed a new, noninvasive technique for detecting marijuana highs that can reliably tell the difference between people who are truly impaired by the drug and those who merely used it recently.”

What has happened to so-called Drug Recognition Experts (DRE)? Have the courts finally realized that police officers using pupil dilation charts to determine which type of drugs a motorist is under is junk science?

Nope, because soon, DRE police officers across the country will be using pupil dilation charts and portable fNIRS brain scanners to determine if someone is under the influence of drugs.

“For so long, our model has been alcohol, so there’s been a lot of focus on breath and blood levels,” Dr. Jodi Gilman, who led the research, said. “Our thought was, ‘What about looking directly at the brain?’ “

The MGH study claims that fNIRS scanners are accurate 76 percent of the time.

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Heavy Cannabis Use by Female Adults Associated With Lower Incidence of Diabetes

A new study recently published in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research found that women who heavily used cannabis had lower incidence of diabetes, a chronic condition that prevents the body from either making enough insulin (type 1) or being able to use insulin efficiently (type 2).

Approximately one in 10 Americans has diabetes, and the condition accounted for 87,647 deaths in the United States in 2019, making it the seventh leading cause of death for that year.

For the study, Texas A&M University School of Public Health graduate students Ayobami Ogunsola, Samuel Smith, Udeh Mercy and Olatunji Eniola, along with a colleague from Hofstra University, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2013-2018). From approximately 15,000 participants. The majority of participants were female, white (non-Hispanic), over 40, and had at least a college-level education.

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