swab checks marijuana
Legalization in California is proving to be a bittersweet victory for advocates of cannabis and freedom. Not only has the DoJ promised to start going after innocent people in states where marijuana is legal but now police are setting up checkpoints to specifically target marijuana users.

Since weed was legalized in California, the San Diego police department has begun conducting checkpoints to target drivers who may be under the influence of pot. During these highly questionable checkpoints, police are taking saliva samples from motorists and running it through a machine called the Drager 5000.

The swab checks the saliva to see if the driver has marijuana in their system and in regard to the 4th Amendment, they are certainly controversial.

As News 8 reports, police said there many factors that go into a DUI arrest after some raised concerns that marijuana could be in their system and could test positive but not be impaired - since marijuana can stay in a person's system for long period of time compared to alcohol.

If a cop suspects a driver of being high, they request that he or she take the mouth swab test, and perhaps a field sobriety test as well. During this process, they're trying to gather evidence to incriminate you.

The Drager 5000, already in use in other countries and cities such as Los Angeles and New York, detects the presence of various substances, including THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. The problem is, this test has absolutely zero ability to test actual impairment or level of intoxication.

But a positive reading can give cops the excuse for the more invasive procedure of a blood test. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune:
"Officers trained to recognize the symptoms of drug impairment will first look for various indicators that a driver is high, from an unsafe driving maneuver to bloodshot eyes to the odor of marijuana to blank stares, San Diego police Officer Emilio Ramirez said. Once there is ample suspicion of drug use, the officer can then request to perform field sobriety tests or for a driver to take the Dräger 5000 test.

If the driver refuses at that point, the officer can force the person to submit to a blood test.

To use the machine, the driver is handed a mouth swab and instructed to run it around the inside of the mouth for up to four minutes. The swab is then placed into the machine, along with a vial of testing solution, and the machine does its work. It takes about six to eight minutes for results to print out on a receipt.

A positive result will likely send the driver to a police phlebotomist for a blood test to determine precise drug levels."
Even a negative result could lead to a mandatory blood test if the officer still suspects impairment.
"If the mouth swab test is negative but the officer still has a suspicion of impairment, then a blood draw might still be mandated, because the Dräger 5000 only measures for seven kinds of narcotics, Ramirez said."
And if you can't make bail, you'll be sitting in jail for weeks or months awaiting the blood test results. For many people, this would mean being fired from their job, or being ripped away from their family, or some other life-altering repercussion - all because a cop invaded your privacy at an unconstitutional roadblock.

The Drager 5000 can give positive results for THC even if the person did not even use cannabis that day. If it's legal to use cannabis - as in California - and the swab test can detect THC from days prior, there is absolutely no rationale for deploying the machine. Despite the fact that someone can be perfectly sober and still test positive, this "evidence" is admissible in court.

San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman played on fears over legalization to justify their fancy new $6,000 machines, saying, "It's a huge concern of ours with the legalization of marijuana that we're going to see an increase in impaired drugged driving."

Clearly, these new stoned driving checkpoints, along with the Drager 5000 mouth swab test serves no actual purpose in addressing impaired driving, but is just another tool of the police state being rationalized by cannabis decriminalization.