Pubdate: Sat, 01 Sep 2012
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Douglas Quan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?224 (Cannabis and Driving)

POT-SMOKING DRIVER RAISES ISSUES

The recent acquittal of a Saskatchewan driver on impaired driving 
charges - even though she admitted using marijuana before hitting the 
road and bungled a number of co-ordination tests - is raising 
questions about the ability of law enforcement to go after drugged drivers.

Some advocates say that Canada's drug-impaired driving laws 
introduced in 2008 are deficient and that federal lawmakers should 
move to adopt drug-intake thresholds similar to the 0.08 blood-alcohol limit.

The judge in the Saskatchewan driver's case said police and 
prosecutors failed to convince him that her use of marijuana actually 
affected her ability to operate a vehicle.

Saskatoon police set up a roadside checkpoint on June 19, 2011. An 
officer approached a vehicle and smelled an overwhelming odour of marijuana.

The driver admitted to the officer that she had smoked marijuana 
about 2-1/2 hours earlier. The officer, who was a trained drug 
recognition evaluator, had the driver perform a number of 
co-ordination tests. During the walk-and-turn test, the driver missed 
a number of heel-toe steps and failed to turn, as instructed. During 
the finger-to-nose test, she was able to touch her nose only once 
during six attempts.

The officer also noticed eyelid tremors and reddening of the eyes.

Following these and other tests, the officer concluded the driver had 
marijuana in her system, which was later confirmed by a urine analysis.

But in a court ruling Aug. 21, provincial court Judge Daryl Labach 
said the evidence presented in court only showed that the accused had 
used marijuana prior to being stopped and that some of it was still 
in her system when she was evaluated by police.

"What (the officer's) evidence does not convince me of is that at the 
time she was driving, her ability to operate a motor vehicle was impaired.

The judge said he was left with many questions: What signs of 
impairment can be expected after marijuana use? How long after using 
marijuana would you expect to see these signs and how long would they 
last? Was the accused's performance in the tests consistent with 
someone who has poor balance or poor coordination as it was with 
someone who had used marijuana?

The lack of answers, and the lack of evidence of erratic driving, 
raised reasonable doubt the driver was driving impaired, the judge said.

There have been similar acquittals in other jurisdictions. Labach 
referred to a 2010 case out of Ontario in which a man hit a mailbox 
and went off the road. The driver had droopy eyes, slow, thick 
speech, and was unco-ordinated. A police drugrecognition expert 
concluded the driver was likely impaired by a central nervous system 
depressant, later confirmed by a urine analysis.

But Ontario Justice Stephen J. Fuerth acquitted the driver, saying 
that the Crown had failed to show beyond a reasonable doubt that 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 ruled.

Representatives of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) said Friday 
that data on drug-impaired driving convictions in Canada have been 
difficult to obtain. But they said there is now growing recognition 
that federal lawmakers need to remove some of the subjectivity 
contained in Canada's drug-impaired driving laws.

"This is the way to go," said Robert Solomon, a law professor at 
Western University and MADD's national director of legal policy. "We 
need clear, bright line indicators ... that are capable of enforcement."

One challenge, however, is getting experts to agree how much of a 
certain drug needs to be found in someone's system to constitute impairment.

Solomon said that "there's no reason for Canada to reinvent the 
wheel" as many jurisdictions in the United States, Western Europe and 
Australia have already adopted such standards.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom