Pubdate: Mon, 30 Jun 2014
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Douglas Quan
Page: A9
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?224 (Cannabis and Driving)

IMPAIRED DRIVING LAW 'COSTLY, CUMBERSOME'

B. C. Technology Company Producing First Commercial Marijuana- 
Detecting Breathalyzer

Six years after federal law changes gave police new powers to compel 
suspected drug impaired drivers to take roadside sobriety tests, 
watchdogs say the system has been ineffective, resulting in few charges.

But there is no consensus as to what should be done about it. A B. C. 
technology company is producing what it says will be the first 
commercial marijuana-detecting breathalyzer, but a prototype is still 
a few months away from release and needs further testing.

The advocacy group MADD Canada recently went to Parliament Hill to 
push the idea of random roadside saliva testing - a system already in 
use in Australia and Europe but is likely to draw concerns about 
civil liberties here.

And unlike the 0.08 per cent blood alcohol concentration threshold, 
there's no scientific consensus about how much consumption of certain 
drugs will cause impairment, further complicating matters.

"Were moving forward. We're not quite there yet," said Doug Beirness, 
an impaired-driving research consultant in Ontario.

The current challenges aren't a complete surprise, Beirness said. 
Just look at the introduction in 1969 of the national breathalyzer 
law to combat drunk drivers. It was fraught with growing pains, and 
lawyers are still arguing the reliability of the devices today.

"Any piece of technology will be challenged. And it will be 
challenged almost continuously."

Under 2008 Criminal Code amendments, an officer who suspects a driver 
may be impaired by drugs can demand that the driver take part in a 
physical co-ordination test, known as a Standardized Field Sobriety Test.

If the driver fails that test, the officer can compel the driver to 
go to the police station for a lengthier evaluation by a certified 
drug- recognition expert.

If, at the end of that evaluation, the expert believes the driver is 
impaired by a particular drug, the expert can order the driver to 
submit a blood, urine or saliva sample to confirm the presence of that drug.

"Unfortunately, the new drug-impaired driving law has proven to be 
very costly, time consuming, and cumbersome to enforce and 
prosecute," says an article published this month in the journal 
Traffic Injury Prevention and written by Western University law 
professors Robert Solomon and Erika Chamberlain.

The article said only 1,126 drug-impaired driving charges were laid 
in Canada in 2012, which is less than two per cent of the total 
impaired driving charges that year.

Further, the article said, "Canadian courts remain skeptical about 
the link between the presence of drugs in a driver's system and the 
actual impairment of his or her driving ability." Enter the Cannabix 
Breathalyzer, a hand-held device for detecting marijuana being 
developed by B. C. technology company West Point Resources, which 
went public last Thursday.

Company officials say their device will be able to tell within 
minutes whether a person has consumed marijuana within the past two 
or three hours and can help bolster the observations of officers in the field.

"The likelihood of conviction goes up a lot more," said company 
president Kal Malhi, a retired B. C. RCMP officer who spent four 
years working in the drug section.

Plus, he said, blowing into a device is not as invasive of a test as 
saliva or urine tests.

But the device is only in the prototype stage and needs to go undergo 
scientific review. Some observers are skeptical.

"With all work that was done in Western Europe and Australia, if 
there was a reliable breath test for cannabis, I would've thought it 
would've ( already) been pursued in the EU," said Solomon, who is 
also legal adviser for MADD Canada.

Convinced that the current system for detecting drugged drivers is 
"not working," the advocacy group is appealing to federal lawmakers 
to adopt a system similar to what's been in place for years in 
Australia and parts of Europe - the random roadside screening of 
drivers for certain illicit drugs using saliva swabs.

"If the evidence out there is overwhelming and good we should adopt 
it, rather than reinvent the wheel," Solomon said.

Such a tactic is an effective deterrent, Solomon added, because it 
sends a message that you can be "tested anytime, anywhere."

But random testing will surely run into civil liberties challenges, 
experts say. Canada has never allowed random alcohol breathalyzer testing.

The Canadian Society of Forensic Science's drugs and driving 
committee has received funding from the RCMP and the Ontario 
transportation ministry to assess the reliability of saliva-based 
roadside drug testing and to investigate the establishment of limits for drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom