Break the news to your delivery guy gently: It looks like there’s a marijuana breathalyzer in the works.

CBS News is reporting that a California-based laboratory will begin clinical trials for a device that can detect marijuana impairment early next year. Hound Labs, Inc. has been working with researchers at University of California, Berkeley, to come up with a way for law enforcement officers to detect impairment from marijuana in a similar way to how they detect alcohol impairment, which can be used quickly and conveniently in a road stop.

A Gallup survey from March 2015 revealed that 18.9 million Americans, ages 12 and over, used marijuana within the month prior to the survey. Already four states—Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska—and the District of Columbia have passed measures legalizing marijuana, and an additional 14 states have decriminalized some amounts of possession of the substance.

“At the same time that marijuana use is growing dramatically, law enforcement has been impeded by the lack of tools to help identify stoned drivers and get them off the road,” according to the company Hound Labs.  

Now, the company is claiming they’ve created a technology capable of detecting THC (tetrahyedrocannabinol) levels below 500 pg in a breathalyzer test.

With the legal marijuana industry starting to heat up in Chicago, a monthly cannabis meetup is launching to connect medical marijuana enthusiasts and give resources to budding entrepreneurs.

The unlikely, and yet totally natural, marriage of marijuana and technology is the next big step in the evolution of medical cannabis. Aptly nicknamed the “green rush,” California tech companies are clamoring to fill the gaps in the state's supply chain for on-demand medical marijuana with the application of modern, mobile technologies.

Like the rise of Lyft, Uber and Airbnb, a flood of new applications are simplifying access and giving cannabis patients an easier route to a wider variety of products.

California based Hound Labs Inc. is claiming to have made a breakthrough in the rush to develop a portable device capable of detecting THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in the breath of someone that has recently smoked a substance containing the chemical. They claim also that their device will soon be small enough for use by law enforcement to remove impaired drivers from the road.

Before the dispensary circus of ‘09 in Colorado, black-market growers, and dealers were coming up with strain names as fast as they could counterfeit big-name brands. Your dealer would explain to you the amazingness of his primo dankness through the strain name, because most dealers aren’t sophisticated enough to go into further details. Mr. Dealer might ask you, “You know AK-47 homie? Well this is AK-48! What do you know about weed a step better than the best?” Yes there is really a strain called AK-48. Kat Williams made fun of the name bragging game during one of his skits: “This shit right here. This-this shit right here…this is kripta chrona-canalike!

Smoking weed helps patients give up opiates such as heroin, a new study has found.

Researchers at Columbia University monitored patients undergoing treatment for opiate addiction – and found that patients who smoked weed were more able to sleep, less anxious, and more likely to complete their course.

The researchers also found that dosing patients with dronabinol – a drug consisting of the ‘active’ ingredient in cannabis, THC – helped with withdrawal symptoms.

The study authors said, ‘One of the interesting study findings was the observed beneficial effect of marijuana smoking on treatment retention.

Don’t smoke and drive.

An Oakland company working with scientists from the University of California at Berkeley is claiming a breakthrough in the race to develop an instant roadside marijuana breathalyzer.

Hound Labs Inc, whose device is also uniquely designed to double up as an alcohol breathalyzer, is among a handful of companies and researchers hoping to capitalize on increasingly relaxed marijuana laws in the United States.

Hound Labs said on Wednesday it had found an accurate way to measure THC – the psychoactive component in cannabis – within one or two blows. The portable device is designed to help determine if a driver is impaired from recent marijuana use.