Justice Committee on Sept. 25th, 2017

[Dr. Thomas Marcotte]

Yes. As THC breaks down in the body.... THC may hang around for a long time in fat cells and so forth, but it also creates a bunch of metabolites downstream that may or may not have different time courses. Some things may go away after a couple of hours. In cannabis right now we keep focusing on THC. There are other cannabinoids in marijuana that may have a similar effect. Whether or not those directly relate to impairment.... Perhaps some of those metabolites might give us a good idea as to when the person likely last smoked, which would be very helpful. In addition to having impairment and behavioural measures, you would know that a person smoked roughly three hours ago or something like that.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

This might be just a little detail, but you said that you were using 6.8% THC cigarettes in this study, or in one of the studies you mentioned.

[Dr. Thomas Marcotte]

That was someone else's study. In our study we're up to 13.4%. We're limited to what NIDA can provide.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

We have heard that American researchers are using a strength of joints, or whatever you want to call them, that is nowhere near the strength that's available.

[Dr. Thomas Marcotte]

It's getting better, but we're still behind the curve. Most studies you'll see were done with 6% THC. Right now they're up to 13%, which is what we're using. On average, drugs confiscated in America were about 12% to 15%. If you go to dispensaries, what they're putting out is around 30%.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are a number of studies showing that people self-titrate, so just because you can get a marijuana cigarette in a higher dose doesn't mean you smoke the whole thing. They smoke half of it to get high. I'll just add that other methods like dabbing will give you a big boost. With these methods, you can't self-titrate—that's a whole other area to get into.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Fryer, I'd like to ask you about Australia's zero tolerance for any detected amount of THC in the system in all your roadside tests. I take it that this kind of system wouldn't work in a regime such as we're facing if we legalize cannabis. We've heard testimony that people can have detectible amounts of cannabis in their system for hours or maybe even days if they're a regular user. Is it the case that this just wouldn't stand up?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

Mr. Cannings, I think the challenge is to get into the hearts and minds of the community, to convince the people that if they choose to use cannabis they should separate this behaviour from driving.

I suppose we have the luxury of not having to prove impairment at all. If we detect cannabis or illicit drugs in the system, the courts can uphold drug driving. The challenge for you is whether it's a public awareness campaign, an enforcement campaign, or both. We do both in Australia. We certainly have proactive advertising around separating behaviours.

I think there needs to be some sort of stick around enforcement. People should fear that if they run the gauntlet of having illicit drugs in their system, then they may get detected and charged. I think there are challenges if you don't have a general deterrence model in your law enforcement activity. People will think they'll be able to run the gauntlet and they'll be putting other road users at risk.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I want to be clear on the 100,000 roadside saliva tests that you ran. Were all of those on drivers who had been pulled over because of suspected impairment, or were some randomized?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

These were absolutely randomized. Under my command, we have drug and alcohol buses. These are very large buses that we put on freeways and put everyone through the bus. The whole freeway will be blocked and we'll filter people through. This is for general deterrence and a good result for that activity is one in 44. My highway patrols are single-officer patrol vehicles. If they detect people driving erratically, their strike rate is as low as one in three. When you combine it, that's how we come up with one in 11 for the 100,000. We practise general deterrence on our drug and alcohol buses, but when our highway patrol detects people driving erratically, one out of three come up positive in tests.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

What is the ratio of the number of drivers you test for drugs versus alcohol on the buses?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

With our buses we do anywhere from 3 million to 4.5 million tests a year. On the buses, our strike rate for alcohol is one in 370. For drugs it's one in 44. We have 10 police on a highway testing people as they come through, but our highway patrol has a lower strike rate when it comes to alcohol because they're seeing impairment.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

How many people are tested for drugs on those buses, versus alcohol? Is everybody tested for drugs?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

Not everyone, because it's too cost prohibitive. They will select people coming through the line, but they'll be tested for both drugs and alcohol. It's not every person who comes through.

The buses do 50,000 drug tests, and the other 50,000 are done by the single-officer patrols and highway patrol. My alcohol buses do about 1.5 million breath tests a year. The highway patrol and general duties do the other three million.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Fryer, I'd like to talk to you some more about this oral fluid testing.

You showed us a couple of different units. Are they actually different units or different variants? Do they detect different things?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

The first one I showed you, the blue one, is what we call the POFT, the preliminary oral fluid test. That is what we do a 100,000 times. If they then test positive to that, they do the OFT, the oral fluid test, the red one, which is our evidentiary test. It is that one that we then send off to our forensic laboratory for analysis.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

With the first one, it's a yes-or-no sort of test. We detect some level of a particular drug, or not.

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

Yes.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

What's the ratio of false positives in that situation?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

We're comfortable that we don't have the false positives.

What has been occurring, and it still occurs.... This is the oral fluid test, the evidentiary test that we then send off to our lab. Of these, about 2% come back as not sufficient sample to be tested. It's about 2% that come back that they can't detect an amount that we would put before a court.

It is very rare to not have the actual statistic, but I don't have the data that says of the preliminary tests, how many come up negative on the evidentiary test. I'm thinking that's probably about 1%.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

The oral tests they use for evidentiary purposes do not actually involve the taking of blood. It's just strictly oral at this point.

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

Our testing regime is supposed to be—and it's hard to educate our members not to do this—a general deterrence model. If they see someone they believe is driving impaired, they are supposed to do an impaired driver test similar to your sobriety test. What many of them do is just go straight to these tests, because it's quicker and easier.

The benefit of doing a sobriety test is that if they fail it, they then have to get blood off them and we get absolute analysis of what type of drug and the level of drug. It doesn't happen that often. I'd like it to happen more.

Now that they have this bit of equipment, our members default to it because it's quite easy and quick to use. The sobriety test takes up to an hour and a half, by the time you end up getting a nurse out to take the blood.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

If I understand correctly, you do the mandatory drug screening stops where everybody who comes along gets stopped. Do you actually stop every car that comes along, or do you select the cars?

[A/Commr Doug Fryer]

On a proper roadside testing, we have buses that are the size of a coach. They are decked out just for driving alcohol testing. We have 10 of those, and we will put them across the state. We will block an entire freeway and have about 10 to 12 officers standing in a line, and every vehicle will be flagged through. Everyone who gets flagged through will be tested for alcohol, and then the officers on the line will go through a ratio of doing drug testing as well. We don't test all of them because it's cost-prohibitive.

They will not really target, but they'll selectively choose people to be drug tested as well. That happens 50,000 times on our larger deterrence buses. Our single officers on highway patrol almost always use their 50,000 drug tests because they see impairment on the road. They pull them over and then they do a drug test.