DRUG DRIVING

Feds Introduce Legislation to Combat Drug Impaired Driving

Impaired driving claims the lives of hundreds of people across the
country every year.

According to the Department of Justice, in 2003, alcohol and/or drugs
were involved in 1,257 fatalities, 47,181 injuries and 161,299
property-damage crashes involving 245,174 vehicles across Canada.

Incidents of drug impaired driving have also been on the rise. A
survey of Ontario high school drivers in 2003 found close to 20 per
cent had driven within one hour of using cannabis (marijuana) at
least once in the previous year.

The federal government proposed legislative reforms this fall to
strengthen the laws against alcohol and drug-impaired drivers. These
reforms will make it easier to investigate and prosecute impaired
driving offences, including those involving drug-impaired drivers.

Constable Peter MacIntyre of the RCMP in Deer Lake said since he
completed a drug recognition course in February 2005 there have been
six incidences of impaired driving under the influence of drugs on
the west coast.

The reforms introduced into the House of Commons in November seeks
stiffer penalties and provides more tools for police for recognition
of drugs including physical tests and bodily fluid samples for drug
detection.

The amendments to the law were supposed to go to its second reading
in Parliament earlier this month but due to other matters were
postponed. The House of Commons does not reopen until January, but
Const. MacIntyre is hoping the law will be on the books by next summer.

The drug influence evaluation which will be administered to suspects
is a 12-step process to determine if a person is impaired, and if
they are impaired, what category of drugs they're using at the time.

The process consists of everything from, sobriety tests like walking
a straight line, to measurements like blood pressure, heart rate, and
including the pupil size and reaction to light, etc.

"It's a fairly in-depth investigation which takes any where from 45
minutes to an hour," Cst. MacIntyre explained.

Anyone suspected of driving while impaired can be tested for drugs or
alcohol.

"I've done tests already. We've seen everything from depressants, to
stimulants, to narcotic analgesics like painkillers, cannabis.
Whether it's prescription drugs or illegal drugs, we're seeing it
all."

Even if a person is found to be impaired while under the influence of
a legal prescription drug they can still be charged with impaired
driving.

Laws related to impaired driving caused by drugs have been in effect
in the US since the 1970's

Const. MacIntyre along with a number of other RCMP officers from
across the country did a course in Halifax in 2005, becoming drug
recognition experts. They then traveled to the Phoenix, Arizona where
they did testing on people being brought to jail under the influence
of drugs.

Drug impaired driving laws were developed in the United States in Los
Angeles in the mid-1970's.

Const. MacIntyre said currently there is a lot of misinformation
about the legislation in the public and basically the new reforms are
designed to take high-risk offenders off the road.

While the incidents in this province are not as frequent as in other
parts of the country or US, Cst. MacIntyre said, daily through the
internet and other media, they are seeing incidents elsewhere of
accidents and death caused by drug impaired drivers.