For a country that is known to love a beer - or two -
Australia has taken a hard stance on drink driving for decades. We weren't the
first country to discourage it, or even the first to enforce it, but after more
than 30 years of public campaigns and random breath testing there is a certain
knowledge in the national psyche that driving while under the influence won't
get you very far.
Yes, attitudes have changed and ways to enforce it through
new technologies have changed. But times have changed too, and as much as
alcohol is still a big issue so too are other forms of recreational drugs.
Illegal drugs are not new, but, following the lead of some
European countries and some of the more liberal states in the US like Colorado
and Washington, there is ever-growing pressure on governments to relax laws -
even legalise and control - the use of some drugs, particularly Marijuana.
So, in this special report, we take a look at how Australia
presently handles drug driving, and, if circumstances were to alter, look at
how others have adapted to changing times.
How big is the problem?
First of all, are we really drug-driving more?
Since the Australian introduction of mobile roadside drug
testing in 2004 the number of drivers pulled over for a saliva swab has drastically
increased.
The former NSW roads minister Duncan Gay declared in 2015
that the number of roadside drug tests undertaken would increase from 32,000 to
97,000 by this year. If you have driven in NSW recently you may have spotted a
mobile drug testing unit as the state government continues to crack down on
drug affected drivers.
According to a Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
report, the number of people being charged and convicted for drug-driving has
increased 1.9 per cent across Australia between 2014 and 2016. So the short
answer is yes.
Why it's a problem
We know that drugs effect our ability to adequately perform
tasks. Prescription drugs come with detailed instructions on what not to do
after taking them but illicit drugs don't come with warning labels.
Methamphetamine, found in the drug ice can make you feel
indestructible. Benzodiazepine can make you drowsy. And cannabis will probably
have you reaching for the Doritos.
Jokes aside, both stimulants and depressants affect your
driving skills in different ways. While stimulants encourage risky behaviour,
depressants slow down your reaction time. A National Institute on Drug Abuse
study found cannabis to impair a driver's ability to avoid lane weaving and
brake adequately, apparently at a similar level to a driver with a blood
alcohol concentration of 0.08.
How police test drivers
The NSW government estimated that in 2015 that one in 10
roadside drug tests came back positive, compared to one in 300 breath tests for
alcohol.
This doesn't necessarily mean people are driving around high
as a kite. But it does show that there are people in NSW driving with traces of
drugs in their system.
According to Mayo Medical Laboratories in the US, cannabis
can return a positive result three days after use, but the NSW government claim
a roadside drug test will only return a positive result within 12 hours of use.
So, no matter whether you smoked a joint a week ago or went on an ice binge
that day, the test can't pinpoint if you are impaired, just that there are certain
amounts of either cannabis, methamphetamine or MDMA present.
This was the case for Lismore man Joseph Ross Carrall, who
after taking advice from police in May 2015 to wait a week after smoking
marijuana before driving, was arrested for drug-driving the next month - nine
days after smoking a joint. Carrall was found not guilty after the magistrate
concluded he had made an "honest and reasonable mistake of fact".
While experts continue to reassure motorists that the
potential of a "false positive" is highly unlikely, the fact still
remains that the saliva swab tests for traces rather than discerning whether
the driver is affected by drugs at the time of driving.
Who is driving high?
It may sound obvious, but a five-year study of chronic drug
users conducted by multiple institutes in Australia found they are more likely
to drive whilst high than the average Australian.
Of the 1,913 users that volunteered to take part in the
survey the typical person was a 30-40-year-old man whose first language was
English and hadn't completed high school. Alarmingly, some users admitted to
driving within an hour of ingesting drugs
The type of drugs they admitted to using ranged from
marijuana to Benzodiazepines but the most commonly used one among the
participants was heroin. Controversially, as an opiate, heroin isn't one of the
drugs subject to mobile testing.
Another outcome of the study was that researchers found the
likelihood of users to drive after taking drugs actually decreased over the
five years. It is not clear whether that's because police have deterred drug
impaired people from driving or a change in behaviour.
Selective testing
Cocaine is widely used across major cities, but it is left
off the test strip.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission's recent
report indicated a substantial increase in cocaine related arrests in all
states except for the ACT and the Northern Territory. It's understandable why
Sydney is nicknamed the cocaine capital with 53.7 per cent of Australia's
cocaine arrests taking place within NSW borders.
The other drug missing from test kits is benzodiazepine,
which is found in prescription drugs like Valium, Xanax and Klonopin and are
known to impair a person's ability to drive and also make them drowsy.
Some consider this type of selective testing a class issue.
Greens MP David Shoebridge says "there is no question that the police are
targeting drug driving tests against those parts of the state that are less
wealthy. It's more class warfare from the Coalition government".
Yet, it is not a question of whether it's technically
possible to test for cocaine. Dräger, the company supplying police drug test
kits, claims its products are able to test for cocaine and other drugs that
Australia currently doesn't test for, like opiates.
One drug testing system that could be worth learning from is
in the United Kingdom. The British government recently enforced drug-driving
limits for illegal and prescription drugs. Their reasoning for setting limits
for illicit drugs like cocaine was to allow for accidental exposure, like
passive smoking. Right now, a driver in the UK can have up to 10 micrograms of
cocaine per litre of blood before it's considered illegal drug driving.
In total, police in the UK can test for 16 different drugs
compared to three in Australia. Some can be tested roadside while others
require blood and urine tests. Included on the list are prescription drugs like
diazepam and methadone but also the hallucinogenic LSD. The UK has harsher
penalties for those found guilty of drug-driving, with a minimum 12 month
driving ban and a fine of up to £5,000 ($8500).
It is clear that testing someone's ability to drive under
the influence of cannabis isn't as straightforward as alcohol. That might
change as tech companies take the breathalyser typically used for testing a
driver's blood alcohol concentration and create a viable marijuana
breathalyser. Cannabix Technologies in Canada is currently testing a product
that can determine if someone has consumed marijuana within a three-hour period.
It is a promising step, but also an expensive one. Cannabix Technologies
estimates one breathalyser will be sold for $1,000 USD.
While it sounds expensive, considering how costly our
current method of testing is, a marijuana breathalyser could be worth the
investment. A 2014 report conducted by Curtin University found that on average
it cost $38 to perform one roadside drug test, this includes the police
officers' time and the test itself. In total between 2013 and 2014 it cost the
federal government over $6million for all mobile drug tests to go from roadside
testing to laboratory results. And this was before the drug crackdown.
The Colorado experience
Some states in America have a different approach to drugs
than Australia.
In the US, 26 states and one district have legalised either
recreational or medicinal marijuana use and most still rely on field sobriety
tests as means as testing for driving under the influence. In simple terms,
that means a police officer assesses your ability to walk in a straight and
count to 30 if they suspect you of driving under the influence. It's far less
black-and-white than in Australia where you will be instructed to stick out
your tongue and have someone scrape off some saliva, but it also brings its own
problems.
Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012 and one of
the major issues it now faces is accurately testing a driver's impairment. Part
of the response is that Colorado has increased the number of police officers
trained in advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement, but there are still
challenges. One is that they recently imposed a marijuana driving limit of five
nanograms of active tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical compound in
marijuana that makes a person high.
However, scientists (and pro weed advocates) claim that the
level of THC in someone's system is completely dependent on the individual's
metabolism since THC is fat soluble. A person with a speedy metabolism could
have a THC reading of more than five nanograms but feel completely fine whereas
someone with a slower metabolism might be higher than both Cheech and Chong.
The numbers don't look good in any case. NSW has two million
more residents than Colorado yet it experienced as many road fatalities in one
year than NSW recorded over a three-year period. The Colorado department of
transport claims this increase in fatalities is down to drug use.
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