UNFIT TO DRIVE?

As politicians grapple with drug policies, out in the real world
Britain's police forces are struggling with a rising number of drug
takers on our roads, having no reliable test to prove their driving is
impaired. Andrew English reports.

You deserve an explanation. What on earth does the man from Her
Majesty's Telegraph think he's doing, taking drugs and making a
spectacle of himself in Amsterdam's red-light district? I daresay
you'll want to know about the drugs as well, so I'll satisfy your
curiosity about those first. It was a small resealable plastic bag of
cannabis, called "Northern Lights". It was purchased for around UKP8
within five minutes of our arrival in the Dutch capital, where police
take a liberal view of the possession of small amounts of the drug for
personal use. We repaired to one of the city's many coffee shops
(there are around 600 across Holland) and rolled a joint, of which I
smoked about half.

Northern Lights is strong enough to fell an oak and it did the
required job very well. I haven't felt like that for a long time,
and yes, when I was a student, I did inhale. My mouth went dry, my
eyelids swelled red and I was fabulously indiscreet. I told
outrageous, made-up stories and even got into the old argument about
whether green is better than blue (clearly, blue wins hands down).
About 20 minutes after smoking the joint, I remember suggesting that
what we really needed was an Aston Martin DB5, with 20kg of Northern
Lights packed in the sills and rocket-firing machine guns behind the
headlamps, so we could make a break for the border. I don't know
whether Kevin Delaney, the Metropolitan Police's former chief traffic
officer, had ever before been asked to co-operate with an armed drug
smuggler, but he had the good grace to smile at the suggestion. He
then asked if I could think back to a time when I was 17 years old,
and whether at that age I would have considered climbing behind the
wheel of a car in this condition. I mumbled something about being
very unsteady but that "fun" seemed to be a very important word right
now, and if I was 17 and en route to a party, then maybe, just maybe....

At that point his kind, knobbly face lost its smile. He stood up,
bringing the coffee shop to a clattering halt as he did so. "I think
you'd better step outside, sir and answer a few questions," he said,
defying anyone to resist. Which is how Delaney, who now works for the
RAC (Royal Automobile Club) Foundation, and a very stoned motoring
correspondent brought an Amsterdam street to a halt as we conducted
the "sobriety test", a series of manoeuvres designed to judge whether
someone's driving is impaired, derived from American police procedures.

Up to this summer, the sobriety test, along with a host of other drug
testing wipes, saliva samplers and urine testers, and a field
impairment test on pupil sizes (which are affected by drugs), have
been trialled with constabularies in Strathclyde, North and South
Wales, Cleveland, Northampton, Sussex and Derbyshire. The trials are
part of a bigger three-year Department of Environment, Transport and
the Regions (DETR) study into drugs and driving that formally ends
this month. It seems there will be no formal report on the study,
although we understand that certain results will be collated and
examined by the Transport Research Laboratory in Crowthorne, Berks,
and that ministers, the DETR, the Home Office and the Association of
Chief Police Officers will see the results. Make no mistake, driving
while under the influence of drugs (illegal or otherwise) is
potentially a big problem in Britain. Last year, the then roads
minister Baroness Hayman released the first part of the DETR study,
which recorded that in the bodies of all 619 road accident fatalities
studied, medicinal drugs were present in six per cent, illegal drugs
(mainly cannabis) were found in 16 per cent and alcohol in 34 per cent
- with 23 per cent over the current drink-driving limit of 80mg per
100ml of blood. Taking drivers alone, the survey recorded a six-fold
increase in the number of fatalities found to have traces of illegal
drugs in their blood, up from three per cent in 1985/87 to 18 per
cent. Alcohol is still the commonest drug found in bodies of accident
fatalities but all drugs, and particularly cannabis, are increasingly
being detected as well.

It is estimated that more than three million people regularly take
illegal drugs in the UK and that 85 per cent of 22 - 25 year-olds
believe their peers drive after taking them. Recent surveys also
claim that more than 750,000 car passengers claim to have been driven
by someone high on illegal drugs, while a recent Lex Report on
Motoring showed that in the past 12 months more than half a million
people claimed to have been in a car where the driver was under the
influence of cannabis.

Yet there is widespread ignorance of the dangers. Chatting with
locals in Amsterdam, we were regularly told: "It's perfectly all
right to drive about two hours after taking cannabis." Meinhard
Carper, editor of the respected Dutch motoring magazine Auto Week, was
more concerned. "Of course there is a problem, it's just that no one
knows how much of a problem it is," he said. The Irish government has
just commissioned a UKP300,000 advertisement campaign using Pulp's
Sorted for Es and Whizz as a backing track after it saw evidence that
many young Irish think driving while under the influence of drugs
makes them better drivers. Yet, while the British Government
continues to spend around UKP2 million a year to (successfully) reduce
the incidence of drink-driving, it spends nothing on advertising the
perils of drug-driving.

The RAC Foundation and Auto Express magazine are calling for a simple
traffic light warning to be printed on the packaging of legal drugs.
This would warn consumers about drugs they should not mix with driving
(red light), those they should consult their GP about (amber light) or
those that are safe to drive on (green light). It's a good proposal,
which is gaining support from MPs, but in the case of illegal drugs
such as cannabis the situation is more complicated.

For a start, their illegality puts the Government in something of a
quandary. Should it give advice on safe dosages, or a safe time to
drive after taking drugs that we shouldn't be taking in the first
place? There is also the business of enforcement. The roadside kits
tested by police have not been an unalloyed success. There have been
criticisms of the cost (a single drug test costs a round UKP3, whereas
a disposable plastic tube for an Alcometer costs about one penny), the
packaging and the display of results; even Kevin Delaney wasn't
altogether impressed by the instructions and ease of use of the
SureScreen Diagnostics urine test he performed on me.

And what is being learnt from all this testing? Most illegal drugs
are flushed out of the body within a couple of days, but knowing that
a drug is in your system is not the same as proving that it is
impairing your driving; and cannabis brings its own problems in this
respect. There are around 400 compounds in a hemp or cannabis plant;
60 of them are cannabinoids, and of these just a few are the isomers
of tetrahyrocannabinol (THC), which gives the "high". You need about
10 milligrammes of THC to get high, although when smoked only about a
quarter of that gets into the bloodstream. Most of it gets flushed
out of the body within a few hours, but THC isomers have a sort of
"half-life" and traces are detectable in the body up to six weeks
after smoking a joint. And there lies the problem - the presence of
cannabis does not prove that a person is unfit to drive at the time of
the test. For all the swab, wipe and urine testing being done at
present, "All we are finding out," according to one policeman, "is
that a very significant minority of the British public like taking
drugs, mostly cannabis." Half-way results of the DETR study showed
that cannabis use is largely confined to the under-40s, whereas
medicinal drugs were found mainly in the bodies of the over-40s.

Senior policemen and MPs are sabre-rattling at the moment for more
anti-drug driving laws, but framing legislation on the basis of
evidence that a drug is present in a person's body will be difficult
in practical terms, and poses a civil liberties issue. A person can
be prosecuted for illegal drug use, but that is not a motoring
offence. And what if you legally smoked your "jazz woodbine" in
Holland (whether for recreational or medical purposes). And one month
later you are charged with driving while unfit through drugs or under
the influence of drugs, purely on the basis of a wipe, urine or saliva
test? Where's the impairment? There is a motoring offence already on
the statute, "Driving Whilst Unfit Through Drugs", where the Crown has
to prove ingestion of drugs and that driving was impaired; generally
through an accident. It is rarely used, partly because alcohol is
often also involved and is easier to obtain a conviction for. But if
my Dutch experience is anything to go by, the young tend simply to
smoke cannabis - none of the coffee shops I saw had alcohol on sale,
merely tea, soft drinks and coffee.

There is also some research that points to cannabis being a lesser
impairment on driving than alcohol. H W J Robbe's book, Influence of
Marijuana on Driving (ISBN 90-5147-023-1), is a scientific study on
cannabis and driving sponsored by the US Department of Transportation
and the Institute for Human Psychopharmacology at the University of
Limberg, Maastricht. Researchers even conducted driving tests on
public roads in dual-control cars with subjects high on cannabis -
which perhaps answers a few questions about Dutch standards of
driving. Although Robbe never condones driving while on drugs, he
does point out that the subjects high on cannabis became cautious,
critical of their own abilities, and concentrated hard to overcome the
effects of the drug, while alcohol generally produced the opposite
reaction, which is one of its greatest dangers. But if you are in any
doubt that cannabis affects driving ability in the short term, think
again. Driving is a big part of my job and I can tell you I could
barely walk out of that coffee shop, let alone drive. I had to
concentrate hard on Delaney's commands and spent most of the time
biting my lip to stop giggling - although when out photographer
stepped in what must have been Holland's prize-winning dog-poo, even
Delaney laughed. In what was later described by stoned spectators as
"pure theatre, man", we carried out four sobriety tests: walking nine
precise steps and back along a straight line, balancing on one foot
while staring at the foot held in the air, estimating 30 seconds with
the eyes shut and the head held back, and, while in the same position,
touching the end of the nose with the middle fingers on each hand as
directed.

I asked Delaney what he would have done, assuming he was still a
policeman and that the motoring offence he had originally pulled me
over for hadn't been too serious. He thought for a moment and then
said he would have had no hesitation in arresting me, and sending a
file with the results of the sobriety test, an undoubtedly positive
urine or blood test and details of the motoring offence to the Crown
Prosecution Service. However, the crucial question for police and
legislators alike is: how long does the impairment last? Earlier in
the day and stone cold sober, I had conducted a low-speed manoeuvring
test at the Zandvoort race circuit, performed the sobriety test and
asked Delaney what his actions would have been if he had pulled me
over for the same minor misdemeanour. He agreed that he would have
given me a talking to and sent me on my way. But what about the
morning after? We assembled early at Zandvoort. After just four
hours sleep, my eyes were red and I felt a little groggy, but I had
none of the imbalance or euphoria associated with cannabis. I
wouldn't have wanted to nail a quick lap time round the old race track
in the sand dunes, but felt I could drive reasonably safely. The
manoeuvring test showed this to be the case, with, if anything, better
results than the first "sober" test the previous afternoon.

The sobriety test went without a hitch and, even when the urine test
showed a clear indication that I had drugs in my system, Delaney
reckoned he would have had to let me go after a talking to - in other
words, the same result as the sober test, despite the drugs in my body.

Delaney reckons that the thought of drugged drivers on our roads
"scares 99 per cent of all policemen", a statement borne out by the
police I spoke to in the course of writing this article. A sobriety
test would help them to determine who is impaired to drive, but it
throws its net wide. "This test just deals with impairment," said
Delaney, "and that can be through illegal drugs like cannabis,
cocaine, ecstasy or heroin, but it might just as well be through legal
drugs, or flu, or lack of sleep."

The wide net exposed by the sobriety test leaves it uncertain whether
the test would be adopted (Delaney says he will stake his next year's
salary that we will not see this test in general use in five years)
and legislators will keep searching for a cheap, reliable and accurate
drugs test. I don't blame them, but in the meantime, I am more
convinced now than ever that drivers have to understand that they are
responsible for their own, their passengers' and other road users'
safety. It is that sense of responsibility that should prevent
drug-driving; even without drug guidelines from the Government, an
experienced driver should know whether he is fit to drive, just as he
would if he had a heavy cold or was suffering extreme tiredness.

Because inexperienced young drivers are most at risk, we need to teach
them that they are not better drivers when they are high on drugs, and
that the world's safest, fastest and best wheelmen know better than to
mix the two. An imaginative, unpreachy ad campaign might be a good
start. Whatever you're putting in your body tonight, take a taxi -
it's so much better than ending up as a statistic in a DETR report.