Breathalyzers and brain caps: Researchers race to devise a roadside test for driving while high

The police sergeant’s voice was quiet but firm. She told the college student exactly what he was going to do, and then he did it.

“You’re going to take a series of nine heel-to-toe steps,” she said. “You’re going to look at your feet, you’re going to count your steps out loud, you’re going to keep your hands by your side, and you’re not going to stop once you start. … Then you’re going to come back.”

He put one foot carefully in front of the other, like a tightrope walker who’d made the mistake of looking down.

That sobriety test might have taken place on a windswept roadside, where Sgt. Deborah Batista had just pulled the student over for swerving across lanes. But they were going through the motions in the relative comfort of a Massachusetts General Hospital office building, where researchers were testing a brain imaging device to see whether it could identify people driving under the influence of pot.

As more and more states legalize , scientists and entrepreneurs are