Washington is using a new method to test the use of marijuana in the area that could be more accurate than traditional surveys: testing wastewater.
Alison Holcomb, who is the main author of the Washington state law that legalized marijuana, speculates that testing sewage for THC (the active ingredient in pot) will give the state a better look at the trends of marijuana usage in the area than surveying the population.
"Using wastewater data to actually get a baseline of what drug use looks like in various communities over time can help us develop more sound drug policies," Holcomb tells Reuters. "It's too easy for surveys to be skewed."
The politian explained to Reuters that she decided to use this technque after reading another research report that showed a big difference between the data received on marijuana usage from a survey as opposed to the contents in the local sewage.
A scientist from the University of Washington is backing Holcomb's method of testing.
"It's always good for a chuckle, but it does actually work," Caleb Banta-Green, a researcher at the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, tells The Associated Press.
