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In Force Jul 2 2008
As
early as Dec 10 03, Emile-J. Therien, President, Canada Safety
Council, was lobbying the Criminal Law Policy Section at Justice
Canada about guidelines toward an acceptable policy on testing
drivers for drug impairment.
Regarding
drug-impaired driving Mr. Therien wrote to Mr. Hal Pruden, Legal
Counsel, Justice Canada, and said, "A number of legal and
illegal substances fall under the category of drugs," and he
proceeded to ask, "Would a driver under the influence of
prescription medications be treated the same under the Criminal Code
as a driver on pot or cocaine? Will criminal levels of impairment be
set for prescription medications (and combinations thereof, including
low amounts of alcohol)?"
Mr.
Therien also added, "This issue must be addressed, given the
fact that many senior drivers take multiple medications which can
produce impairment. The complications are evident from the case in
Pembroke, Ontario, where a driver was charged with driving while
impaired by prescribed marijuana."
At
that time, in 2003, the CSC said, "The priority must be public
safety and not simply criminal sanctions," and Therien suggested
that administrative licence suspensions, "have proven an
effective tool in the fight against impaired driving. These
suspensions remove potentially dangerous drivers from the road. They
provide a stern and effective warning without the punitive lifetime
consequences of a criminal record and a costly criminal court
case."
The
CSC was not being soft on drug users, but was trying to strike a
balance between what was effective deterence and safest for the
public.
Since
that time a Conservative government has replaced the Liberals in
Ottawa, and this government has a particular focus on legislating
in the area of crime.
Canadians
now have a federal government determined to prevent more drivers from
operating impaired on the drugs, primarily illegal, like Crack
Cocaine, Heroin, Morphine, and perhaps including cannibis.
As
reported many times by now in the daily newspapers across Canada,
civil liberty legal experts anticipate all kinds of rights violations
flying into the court system because the problem is a lack of
'certainty' in the testing for drugs.
Breathalyzers
detect and measure alcohol concentrations in the bloodstream.
Currently the tests for drugs involve either or both blood samples
and urine.
The
fact remains that even before Jul 2 08 when the new drug analysis on
drivers assumed the status of law, drivers could be charged under the
Criminal Code if impaired by alcohol or drugs; in Canada as most
elsewhere in the world, criminal charges ensue when a driver's blood
alcohol concentration (BAC) reaches 0.08 or higher. A legal standard
for most jurisdictions in Canada imposes 'administrative licence
suspensions' at 0.05 or lower.
During
the run-up to the new law, a Senate committee decided upon visual
recognition methods as the tool for which police are to be trained
for judging drug impairment on pot.
Perhaps
the larger threat in cannabis and driving occurs when the driver has
consumed alcohol and pot, which forms a rather willy nilly
combination of mental effects often throwing users for a loop.
Back
in 2004, the CSC urged, "provincial and territorial governments
to consider imposing administrative licence suspensions on drivers
who have been using cannabis. Police with reason to believe a driver
has been smoking pot should be able to suspend that driver's licence
without a criminal charge. If alcohol is also involved, appropriate
action would be taken depending on the BAC."
Of
course for all the discussion about the devil's weed, the law isn't
entirely directed at pot smokers, although Prime Minister Stephen
Harper earlier in the decade cited a pot-stoned car driver in Perth,
Ontario, killing a family of five as the prime example of why drug
impairment is a major threat to public safety.
In
British Columbia they are sanguine about the dangerous reality
lurking behind the real issue. In support of the law one of the major
dailies in the province cited a methamphetamine and crack cocaine
stoned big rig driver crossing the line in a drugged out craze and
killing a family in a car up Highway 97 on the way to Prince George.
Some
Canadians are aghast at the amount of drugs on the streets, seeing it
as a problem so large that whole cities are infested, so it comes as
no surprise that a few of those drug addled (those with a few bucks
left or else those who have stolen a vehicle) wind up behind the
wheel to be a continuous threat to everything in their unpredictable
path.
It
was 2006 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a speech to Mothers
Against Drunk Driving to announce the federal government would soon
introduce legislation to tackle drug-impaired driving, wrote Nathan
Denette, Canadian Press, and, the P.M. said, "Just as a drunk
driver does, a drug-impaired driver presents a danger to himself and
others."
It
was during that speech, wrote Denette, that the P.M. cited a
multi-vehicle accident in Perth, Ont., in 1999 that killed five
people, and Harper had said, "We can act to prevent more such
incidents from occurring."
While
police in Canada want these new detection laws, Sgt. Brian Bowman of
the Toronto Police traffic service said, "If we see someone
driving erratically, we really have a high hill to climb to prove
it's from drug-impaired driving," to CBC News. "We almost
need the smoke to waft out of the car or have the pills fall out on
to the road."
The
legal situation now is in the drug recognition evaluation that was
discussed in the Senate to help police detect drug impairment, and
this will be used as police testimony in court. Officer Bowman said,
"The evaluation has proven itself in the States to the point
where hopefully, our courts will be ready for it."
The
new law allows police to take drivers to a hospital for either a
blood, saliva or urine test. Testing for pot is, however, practically
inefficient.
Even
so, "More and more often individuals are refusing to give those
samples and so now finally we are changing the law in this country that
you will be compelled or you will be charged and I think that's a
reasonable response to the problem," said federal Justice
Minister Rob Nicholson.
A
drug-impaired driving will face a minimum $1,000 fine for a first
offence. A second conviction could result in a month in jail.
MADD
informs that the new law is a victory "because impaired driving
is the number one criminal cause of death in Canada. Those people
have committed a criminal act by driving impaired, whether it's by
drugs or alcohol and as far as I'm concerned they've lost their
rights," said MADD Canada president Margaret Miller.
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