| There's currently no "Breathalyzer for weed." Police can use an electronic sobriety test to easily discern whether somebody operating a motor vehicle is under the influence of alcohol, but no such technology exists to determine whether a person is driving under the influence of marijuana. Sure, the authorities can draw some blood and look for the presence of THC—the chemical in weed that gets you high—but even that is not a true indication of a person's mental state, because people who smoke a lot of cannabis (aka stoners) usually always have some amount of THC in their blood. The chemical can linger in the human body for days or weeks, long after the high has worn off. So if you're a pot smoker who's been pulled over for a traffic violation where the cop suspects you're driving high, there's little you can do to prove you're sober. Cognivue is aiming to change that. The company sells a testing device that looks like a laptop and runs a software program that can measure a person's cognitive ability. The device was originally developed to test for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, and now it's being used in clinical trials to see if it can also detect whether or not someone is baked. In her feature on Backchannel, Amanda Chicago Lewis reports from the Cognivue trials in Colorado. She meets the stoners who are putting the device to the test, as well as the specially trained law-enforcement officers—called Drug Recognition Experts—who claim to be able to beat the machine and tell stoned from sober without the aid of technology. If they're right, the company's efforts would take a massive hit. And if they're wrong, Cognivue could get one step closer to saving thousands of people from unnecessary arrest. Michael Calore | Senior Editor, WIRED | 
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