Pubdate: Tue, 03 Aug 2010 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2010 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 Author: Douglas Quan, Postmedia News POLICE UNPREPARED FOR DRUG-DRIVING LAW Few officers trained to recognize drug-impaired drivers Two years after a controversial law gave police new powers to stop drivers who have been using illicit drugs, most forces still have very few officers trained to do the job. Under the federal law, which came into effect in July 2008, an officer who suspects a driver may be impaired by drugs can demand that the driver perform a test of their physical co-ordination. If the driver fails that test, the officer can compel the driver to go to the police station for a lengthier evaluation by a drug-recognition expert. At the end of that evaluation, the expert can order the driver to submit a blood, urine or saliva sample -- in much the same way police can compel someone suspected of being too boozy to drive to submit a breath sample. Refusal to comply can result in a $1,000 fine. Drug-impaired-driving arrests last year rose to 1,394 from 441 the year before. But they still accounted for only a sliver of the 88,630 total impaired-driving arrests, Statistics Canada data show. Part of the problem, critics say, is that police forces have been too slow to train officers to become drug-recognition experts. There are now just more than 600 nationwide, with wide variations among Canada's major forces. Ottawa police have 16; Toronto police have 14; Vancouver police have 10; and Montreal police have only two officers trained to recognize drugs in a driver. Some agencies admit they struggle to have even one expert available per shift. "It's a joke," said Toronto criminal lawyer Jonathan Rosenthal. "They come out with guns blazing -- 'we're coming out hard on crime' - -- but if you don't put resources into the system, it's meaningless." RCMP Sgt. Evan Graham, national co-ordinator of the drug-recognition expert program, acknowledged the training of officers is a "little behind" where he'd hoped to be at this point, but he said he hopes to add another 200 to 300 experts per year over the next few years. Training takes two weeks to complete, plus there's a week of field certification. "It's not overnight," Graham said. And while authorities say most drug-impaired driving arrests result in guilty pleas, the few cases that have gone to trial have, in at least a couple instances, resulted in acquittals -- raising questions, defence lawyers say, about the reliability of the testing. Earlier this year, an Ontario court heard the case of a man who hit a mailbox with his car and went off the road in Chatham-Kent. Police observed the driver had droopy eyes, slow and thick speech and was unco-ordinated, the court heard. A police drug-recognition expert concluded the driver was likely impaired by a central nervous system depressant, which was later confirmed by a urine analysis. But Ontario Justice Stephen J. Fuerth acquitted the driver. The judge said evidence of the driver's impairment was "far from compelling," and the Crown had failed to show beyond a reasonable doubt the drug had caused the driver to be impaired at the time he was driving. "The hurdle for the Crown in these cases is to relate back the findings of the evaluation, and the subsequent chemical analysis, to the time of the driving," the judge said in his decision. David Maslak, the defence lawyer in that case, said he thinks the science is just not there to support certain drug-impaired driving charges. "I think convictions are going to be few and far between," he said in an interview. But police and safety advocates insist the drug-evaluation program is reliable and has been used with great success for years in the United States. "When you're talking sciences, there's not a lot of room for inaccuracies," said Toronto police Sgt. Tim Burrows. "Reliability (of the tests) is very high." In those cases that resulted in acquittals, prosecutors may have needed to just do a better job of preparing their evidence and calling the right experts, said Doug Beirness, senior research and policy analyst at the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, which supported the legislation. Beirness and other safety advocates say drug-impaired driving has been ignored for too long and is far more prevalent in society than most people think. In 2008, the centre oversaw a roadside survey of 1,500 drivers in B.C., which found that 8.1 per cent had been drinking and 10.4 per cent tested positive for drug use. Cannabis and cocaine were the most common drugs. While the presence of drugs doesn't necessarily imply impairment, "it is likely that most drivers who tested positive were affected to some degree by the substance, thereby increasing the risk of adverse consequences to themselves and other road users," Beirness wrote in an article summarizing the findings. Gregg Thomson, an Ottawa-area board member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said there's no doubt in his mind the new legislation has made Canadian roads safer. "We're extremely pleased with the progress so far," said Thomson, whose son, Stan, was one of five teens killed in 1999 in a chain-reaction accident caused by a 17-year-old driver who had been smoking marijuana. Drivers -- particularly young ones -- have a false perception that only alcohol can cause impairment, he said. "Education is No. 1. We have to get the word out." - --- MAP posted-by: Matt