Justice Committee on Sept. 27th, 2017

[Chris Halsor]

Mr. Rankin, to answer that question, I would tell you it is something that could be articulated in statute and a requirement, but it is simply not in Colorado. Now, as I said in my testimony, I am doing work for the State of Nevada where the State of Nevada actually has that requirement in law. Their coroner's office, or their forensic pathologists, are required to draw blood samples and test for delta-9 and some of the other THC metabolites. In order to utilize that information, having those requirements and the funding in place to allow for the collection and publishing of that data is essential.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Is there a difference between rural and urban areas in either state that you're familiar with insofar as the availability of blood tests? That is, if you're in the middle of nowhere versus in a city where you can get a blood test done quite readily, are there statistics that show those differences, if there are indeed any differences?

[Chris Halsor]

There aren't statistics, but I can tell you anecdotally that, absolutely, there are extreme differences in that. One of the concerns, of course, with delta-9 THC is that it's ephemeral. I'm grossly oversimplifying it, but let's just say delta-9 dissipates from the blood very quickly.

Here in the state of Nevada, about 78% of the population lives in Las Vegas, another 17% lives in Reno, and the seventh largest state in the United States has the other 4% living everywhere else. There are huge swaths of land separating things. We have two counties in Nevada that don't have hospitals, so to get a blood sample in some instances, the closest location is 200 miles away.

We also have limitations on that. For law enforcement to even have the ability to collect blood is a challenge, and I definitely foresee that happening in Canada as well.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Given your expertise as someone who's prosecuted, I want to talk about the nature of the evidence that's used. You mentioned police using standardized field sobriety tests. Canada has employed a number of people who are experts, called drug recognition experts, and their testimony has been accepted as expert opinion evidence by our highest court.

I'm wondering how it works in either state that you're familiar with. Are police simply applying the standardized field sobriety tests and bringing people in on the basis of that? Does it have to go to someone like a drug recognition expert? How does it work?

[Chris Halsor]

Thank you, Mr. Rankin. That's a lot to unpack.

I would say to you that I think the United States and Canada, in terms of impaired driving training, operate fairly parallel. For a police officer who is going through a basic training program to become a police officer will typically receive a 24-hour training in the standardized field sobriety tests. They are the three tests that are employed as basic alcohol impairment detection methods: horizontal gaze, nystagmus, walk and turn, one-leg stand. That's the standard basis, and your average patrol officer will have that training.

Within the last 10 years a new training has been developed. Its acronym is ARIDE. It's a 16-hour training that is a bridge training between the basic program and the much more advanced drug recognition expert program. Typically, it helps law enforcement officers identify seven different categories of drugs. Those seven categories are largely taken from the drug recognition expert program which, of course, is the most advanced training.

Drug recognition experts are very good at what they do. They are typically a very small percentage of the entire police force. They're good at what they do, but there aren't that many of them, in part because their curriculum is incredibly challenging. It's very difficult not only to become a DRE but to maintain your DRE status. There are different levels of police officers. Can you have a police officer who is trained in the basic SFSTs identify a marijuana-impaired driver? Yes, you can, but there are also degrees of impairment.

When I run my green lab classes, we have people who put on varying degrees of impairment. The difficult thing with marijuana impairment is that a lot of the deficits are mental, not physical. I'm guessing most of us can sit here and imagine how drunks present themselves. They'll have a lot of physical manifestations of that. The panel can ask themselves, what does a high person look like? I suppose if you've seen one you could try to put it into words, but I pose this question to my police officers all over the country and they struggle with it. Proving marijuana cases is often proving mental impairment, and that's a much taller task.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Mr. Boissonnault.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to start with putting some facts on the record.

In a letter that comes from the Governor of Colorado and the Attorney General of Colorado to the Honorable Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States, it was clear that in 2016 after the national survey on drug use and health, there was:

...no statistically significant change in marijuana use among Colorado's youth since 2007-08. In fact, the most recent report indicated that between 2013-14 and 2015-2016, the period in which adult-use marijuana businesses opened their doors, youth marijuana use declined by 12%.

Also there was no increase in use by adolescents of eighth, 10th, or 12th grades following legalization.

I also think it's important to note for Mr. Halsor—and this is for the record:

In the first six months of 2017, the number of drivers the Colorado State Patrol considered impaired by marijuana dropped 21 percent compared to the first six months of 2016.

The letter goes on to say that, while this is encouraging, they are going to continue to do their facts.

So, Mr. Halsor, you said that the number of people pulled over by police in Colorado increased in that period. The Attorney General and the Governor say otherwise, a 21% reduction. So I think it's important for us, if we're going to talk about data and facts, that we get our facts correct.

Dr. Kelsall, are you aware that in 2016 your journal published an article that said, very clearly, that public health experts urge realistic pot laws. They brought together 100 people from the Canadian Public Health Association. They asked the federal government to have some of the most restrictive legalization and regulatory frameworks in the world because, in their words, what we had been doing as a country for the last 40 years has not been working and we have the highest incidence of students and young people abusing cannabis. They urged us to have a system that would tightly control this and that wouldn't have the same kind of trade-offs that we had in the alcohol system.

I'll give you an example. I'm quoting the article from 2016:

Portugal’s National Drugs Coordinator Dr. João Castel-Branco Goulão noted that decriminalization of all drugs in 2001 allowed his country to refocus on harm prevention and addiction treatment, while freeing up police resources to hunt criminal “big sharks.”

We've stayed way off C-46 tonight and we're into C-45 territory. So let's have some C-46 territory tonight. Dr. Kelsall, do you think in this framework that we proposed with C-46, interlock devices will keep repeat offenders off the roads, and would that keep people more safe?

[Dr. Diane Kelsall]

I'm not an expert in interlock devices.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

If you have people who are repeat offenders and who offend again and are caught, it's a device put in their car so they can't use their car.

[Dr. Diane Kelsall]

I cannot comment on that. I'm not an expert.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

All right. Do you think that, if we have mandatory roadside screening of people where the police don't have the discretion but just test everybody they pull over, that will screen more people out of the system who otherwise would get through in the current system we have?

[Dr. Diane Kelsall]

I'm not an expert in that.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

So, you don't think, just thinking out loud, that it would keep more people off the road?

[Dr. Diane Kelsall]

I'm not going to make suppositions that way.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Halsor, for you, what are the most effective ways to keep people from getting behind the wheel after using cannabis or alcohol? Is it jail time, the threat of getting caught, or is it what they just saw on their smart phone or their TV about the negative effects of cannabis or alcohol?

[Chris Halsor]

Well, Mr. Boissonnault, I would say statistically—or at least this is what the research says—that the greatest deterrent to impaired driving is fear of getting caught. So, I don't know what the policy answer to that is. They usually say it's high-visibility enforcement, which means law enforcement that is trained and on the lookout for impaired drivers. I think perception is a huge issue in all of this. You know, one of the difficulties with the marijuana legalization question, I think, in many polls in the United States—I don't know what the polling is in Canada—is that the public is supportive of this. It might just be a few percentage points, but it's starting to tip where more people out there are in support of this.

What I would say to you is that the big challenge is that the policy of legalization is outstripping the science. So, there are a lot of questions out there related to public safety—and that can extend to medical efficacy and all these other things involving marijuana—but it becomes difficult to answer these questions. So, looking at alcohol impairment, the deterrent is there, but I think education.... One of the witnesses alluded to edibles, just the way that people take them, the way they process, delayed onset. I would agree with Dr. Kelsall that the public needs some information too, so that they can make wise decisions.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Indeed. It's interesting, because our government a couple of weeks ago committed $274 million to provide police officers with the training they need, to pay for the road screen devices, to make sure there's capacity-building in the system, and to have a robust public awareness campaign, some of which we've already seen roll out with what Dr. Kelsall talked about. It's also important to note that in budget 2017, we committed $79.5 million over five years for these similar activities.

What's interesting...and this is our challenge as policy-makers, as we heard yesterday from Dr. Louis Francescutti, one of the pre-eminent scholars and physicians in the area of injury reduction, in everything from distracted driving to impaired driving. He was categorical: we could spend half a billion dollars and not reach the people we need to reach on a public education campaign. All of the data points to the fact that it's the fear of getting caught, losing your vehicle, losing your licence—those immediate sanctions when you're caught—that actually motivates people to change their behaviour.

That is, in my humble opinion, what I think our government has done and has tried to put in Bill C-46.

Thank you, all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you, Mr. Boissonnault.

Assuming there are no other questions, I want to thank the witnesses.

I really appreciate our two American friends agreeing to join us to offer their expertise. It's very, very much appreciated.

Mr. Compton, we read your report to Congress and very much appreciated it.

Dr. Kelsall, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Again, thank you to everyone.

The meeting is adjourned.