Page 1117 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 8 April 2008
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While the research into the impact of drugs on driving is a relatively new and rapidly expanding field, there is increasing evidence to suggest that certain illicit drugs—namely, cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy—and some prescription medications like benzodiazepines can impair driving ability and increase the risk of collision.
While recent studies have found drugs to be present in a significant number of fatally and non-fatally injured drivers, a direct causal relationship between the use of particular drugs and crash risk has yet to be established. To get around this issue, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have adopted a zero tolerance approach to any presence of drugs in drivers’ bodies, largely because in contrast to alcohol there is no agreed dose of drugs which is accepted as a threshold above which driving will be impaired and/or below which driving will not be impaired.
When introducing RDT programs, other jurisdictions have mirrored drink driving offences and penalties for their new drug driving legislation. The main difference between drink and drug driving offences is that the provisions can necessarily refer only to the presence rather than the level of a drug. For example, in New South Wales it is an offence to drive with the presence of any of the following drugs in oral fluid, blood or urine: active THC—cannabis; methylamphetamine—speed or ice; or methylenedioxymethylamphetamine—MDMA or ecstasy.
If an RDT program were to be introduced in the ACT, the simplest way of structuring the offences and penalties would be to mirror the drink driving provisions, replacing blood samples with oral fluid/saliva samples where appropriate. These offences would also need to take into account the difficulties posed by being unable to establish a level of a drug from an oral fluid sample.
Prior to announcing the introduction of random roadside drug testing, the Western Australian government introduced amendments to enhance their current legislation and was working towards the introduction of standardised impairment assessment procedures, which would be used by police to help facilitate proof of a new offence of driving under the influence of drugs. Studies into the accuracy of field sobriety tests, for cannabis at least, have found results from these tests accord well with toxicological results. Following the introduction of random roadside drug testing, Victoria also required mandatory testing of all blood samples taken from people who had been the driver or suspected driver of a vehicle involved in a motor vehicle accident for drugs as well as alcohol.
I have provided a brief outline of some of the issues involved in this vexed question of drug driving. It remains only to say that my department will issue a discussion paper for public scrutiny in the near future. I had asked my department early in the new year to give me advice on the issue and a draft paper was prepared. I asked for further advice about the logistics of introducing RDT here—for example, whether there are laboratories that can give us the results quickly—and obtained that advice only in the last week or so. I have also taken notice of the work of the University of Canberra.
As I said when we opposed the legislation brought forward by the opposition, I wanted to see what was the case in the other jurisdictions when they did it and I wanted to have some academic rigour about testing the efficacy of those processes.
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