Police outline pot enforcement costs

Marijuana intoxication tests could hit $300K a year: superintendent

Cannabis is set to become legal in Canada this summer and with it comes higher policing costs, the Edmonton Police Commission heard Thursday.

Police officials outlined a laundry list of new technology and training needed to enforce legal weed laws. Last month, the city approved $1.4 million in one-time and ongoing funding to help the police service deal with the impact of legal weed.

There are still many questions looming over legalization, chief among them how police will test drivers for marijuana intoxication. Those tests could cost the police service as much as $300,000 per year, Supt. Al Murphy said.

“There’s just no device that has been approved for use in Canada yet,” said Murphy, a member of the police service’s legalization of cannabis committee. “I would expect that device will be some time in coming. It may be that legalization happens and we don’t have a device yet.”

The new funding from the city will pay for oral fluid testing devices to check for cannabis intoxication, training for specialized field sobriety tests and drug recognition experts, as well as technology upgrades and new employees in the lead-up to the drug ’s legalization.

The federal Liberal government committed to legalizing recreational cannabis use by this summer. While July has been bandied about as the month cannabis would become legal, the Senate’s Aboriginal Peoples committee recently called on the government to delay the measure up to a year to allow more time to consult Indigenous groups.

In an interview last year, police Chief Rod Knecht said he didn’t think the service would be ready to enforce the new laws by July, citing ambiguity about roadside testing for marijuana intoxication. Knecht said that ambiguity would likely further tie up the court system.

Police are currently able to test drivers for some types of drug intoxication, Murphy said, and specially trained drug recognition experts are also qualified to assess whether someone is driving under the influence of drugs.

Murphy said new federal guidelines call for one-third of all frontline officers to be trained in specialized field sobriety testing by 2022. Major cities must also have six drug recognition experts — who each receive three weeks of training.

“We can certainly get there with the resources we’ve asked for, and the level of training we’ve ramped up to,” Murphy said, but “it’s very resource-heavy. It takes some time.”

He added that once a roadside test for cannabis intoxication is approved, it will be another tool officers can use, but the tests will be far more expensive than those for drunk drivers, which cost about 15 cents, Murphy said. Oral fluid testing devices could cost between $75 and $100, he said.

Police use about 4,000 drunkdriving tests per year, Murphy said, saying the annual price tag for oral fluid testing devices could be around $300,000.

The $1.4 million approved by the city April 10 will also go to increased Checkstop operations, a public communications plan, equipment and training for the service’s “clandestine laboratory team” and the occupational health and safety team, and calibration of the oral fluid testing devices.

The police service will present funding requests for the 2019-21 budget cycle to city council this fall, according to the presentation.