Justice committee  They'd absolutely be charged with drug driving, if we can detect it. The courts have already set the benchmark through legislation that if it's detectable through our testing regime, they'll now be convicted of drug driving. Our first penalty is three months' loss of licence and

Justice committee  It's absolutely zero tolerance. The research we rely on is that any detectable presence is an equivalent of about .1 when it comes to alcohol. We know when we have a .1 when it comes to alcohol, there's at least double the chance of having a crash on the road. For us, it's prote

Justice committee  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 th

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  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

Justice committee  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 g

Justice committee  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 eve

Justice committee  I suppose if I separate the single-officer patrols, they've already seen a level of impairment that's indicated that the vehicle needs to be pulled over and checked. I'm relatively comfortable with that. On our bigger drug buses that are pulling over everybody, the concept is tha

Justice committee  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 det

Justice committee  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 re

Justice committee  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

Justice committee  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 patro

Justice committee  No, they calibrate it to detect.... Our legislation has allowed us, and it's tried and tested at the higher courts.... If there is any detectable level of illicit drugs, whether it be amphetamine or cannabis, our legislation advises that there is impairment in that driving.

Justice committee  We are trying to look at technology now that will streamline our drug testing to mirror drink testing. We would like devices that will do both. At the moment, they're completely separate activities. The legislation is completely separate. I mentioned before that my police force

Justice committee  We run our internal courses. All of our members have gone through a one-day training course. It's a very basic saliva test: swab the tongue, leave it flat for six minutes, and the bars will come up. It's very similar to a pregnancy test. Depending on what drugs.... We test for me