Pubdate: Thu, 15 May 2014
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2014 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jessica Leeder
Page: D3

DRUG-IMPAIRED DRIVING IS AN INCREASING PROBLEM

Canadian researchers are developing enforcement guidelines in spite of
the legal obstacles

'Open wide and stick out your tongue." This refrain may soon become
just as commonly heard in the car as it is at the doctor's office.
Canada's lawmakers have commissioned a study led by a top forensic
scientist to explore oral fluids tests designed to detect drug
impairment at the roadside. The study, now under way, is a strong sign
of an impending crackdown on drugged drivers on Canada's roads.

Funded by the federal Department of Justice and the Ontario
Transportation Ministry, researchers will also make recommendations on
the levels of various drugs that constitute impairment. It will then
be up to policy makers to decide whether to write those limits into
the Criminal Code, which currently contains blood alcohol limits but
nothing to guide police or courts when it comes to gauging whether a
driver is physically impaired by drugs. Decisions on whether to equip
police officers with the oral fluids tests - if they pass muster -
will likely fall to individual law enforcement agencies.

"It will be another tool for law enforcement as opposed to a
replacement of the current system," said D'Arcy Smith, general manager
of National Forensic Services for the RCMP and chair of the Drugs and
Driving Committee of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, a
non-profit professional organization that is co-sponsoring the study.

"Drugs are not like alcohol," Smith said. "Setting .08 milligrams [per
100 millilitres of blood] is fairly simple. But for drugs, even drugs
that have been around a long time like cocaine or morphine, you have
challenges because they have individual effects with individuals," he
said.

In recent years, police forces across Canada have struggled with this
factor and the resulting complications it presents for enforcing
drug-impaired driving laws. They've spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars to send officers for special drug-recognition training courses
but graduates have laid few charges - just more than 1,000 in 2012
compared with more than 60,000 alcohol-impairment charges - and
garnered even fewer convictions.

This is in spite of a growing body of evidence that shows drugs are
just as culpable as alcohol in automobile-related fatalities. Among
younger drivers who have grown up in an era in which drinking and
driving is taboo, the issue of drugs and driving is increasingly
problematic.

"There seems to be this lax view that smoking a joint and grabbing the
car keys is okay. It's mind-boggling," said Marc Paris, the executive
director of Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, a non-profit advocacy
group. In a recent study, one-third of teenage respondents considered
smoking marijuana before driving less risky than drinking. "To our
surprise, one quarter of parents agreed," Paris, said, adding: "At the
end of the day, impaired is impaired."

In Colorado, where a medical marijuana system began blooming in 2000
and recreational marijuana use was legalized in 2012, drug-related
road fatalities nearly doubled from 1999 to 2010. The statistic is
illustrative of both the dangers of driving high and the increasing
proportion of people who drive under the influence.

To help curb the problem, lawmakers recently implemented a per se
drugged driving law, meaning drivers can be deemed impaired if they're
found to have more than the legal limit of THC, which is five
nanograms per millilitre of blood.

Several other U.S. states have implemented similar limits. They're
also in place in Norway and Australia, where police can legally use
oral fluid tests - most of which involve licking the end of a test
stick or swabbing the inside of the mouth - at the roadside for a
quick result.

In Canada, Smith and his team have set out to test the top-three
roadside drug tests with an aim of developing a set of specifications
Canada ought to require. They'll also endeavour to suggest per se
limits for about 20 drugs, he said. As for whether the recommendations
will be fit to become law, "That becomes a question for the
legislators to answer," Smith said.

For advocates, those answers cannot come fast enough.

"The bottom line with this is not about prosecuting drug impaired
drivers. It's about creating deterrence," said Andrew Murie, CEO of
MADD Canada. "If police have the same ability to detect drugs as they
do alcohol, ultimately =C2=85 that's what'll save lives," he said.
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