No decision on drug-driving

Press, 25 February 1989, Page 5

No decision on drug-driving

PA Wellington The introduction of drug-driving tests on drivers will be determined by testing costs and the extent of drug use by drivers. /

The Ministry of Transport began looking at detecting drug-impaired drivers last August, but is not committed to testing. Clinical tests are due to begin shortly on the reliability of testing saliva for cannabis use, and a working party has been studying if behavioural tests are a practical way for traffic officers to detect drug use by drivers. One of the tests looked at was the Los Angeles Police Department’s “drug recognition programme,” which is claimed to have a 92 per cent success rate. The scheme has won favour with traffic police in Australia but the Ministry controller of traffic research, Mr Bill Frith, said the success of the system depended on the resources put into it. “From what we’ve read about it, it does seem to

work. But there’s an awful lot of training involved, and it’s not the sort of thing you can teach your average traffic officer in a couple of hours.”

and getting medical testimony as to the effect the drugs in question would have on a driver.

Chief Traffic Officer Price said while it was easy to convict people for driving a vehicle while under the influence of drugs, it was far harder to spot drug users at random stops when their driving appeared safe and they did not smell of alcohol. It is this problem that saliva testing for cannabis is hoped to solve.

Traffic officers already receive police training to identify drivers intoxicated on substances other than alcohol.

The Wellington chief traffic officer, Mr Allan Price, said officers soon became quite skilled at spotting drug users when they stopped a car. Drug-using drivers were “quite irrational, more irrational than they are with alcohol. “You start questioning them and they don’t know what they’re doing.” “They’re quite frank about it, they show you the tablets and then out come the needles and all sorts of other stuff.” After that it was a question of taking a blood test

Mr Frith said most drugged drivers had been using cannabis, and like Chief Traffic Officer Price, he did not believe the problem was very serious here. “we could potentially have a problem if (cannabis) got decriminalised or legalised or became a popularly used recreational drug like alcohol.”