Hamilton police lay cannabis-impaired charge after spotting driver on Red Hill

A 20-year-old Hamilton man is facing a charge of impaired driving by cannabis.

Police saw the suspected impaired driver on the Red Hill Valley Parkway around 3 p.m. Thursday and pulled the car over around Greenhill Avenue and Glen Vista Drive.

Police allege their investigation revealed the driver was impaired by cannabis.

In addition to any possible penalties in court, the driver’s vehicle is impounded for a week and licence suspended for 90 days.

He is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 20.

In the lead-up to cannabis legalization, which took place Oct. 17, Hamilton police were training more officers to be drug recognition experts (DRE).

Trained officers use a 12-step observational process to determine if someone is impaired by drug.

It has always been illegal to drive while impaired and police have said they will continue to focus on the signs of impairment — weaving, speeding, driving too slow, sudden braking and hitting curbs.

There are now also legal driving blood concentrations for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the psychoactive compound in cannabis.

It’s illegal to drive with five nanograms (ng) of THC per millilitre (mL) of blood, and to have at least 2.5 ng/mL when combined with alcohol.

This can only be proven with a blood test.

Even before legalization, as Hamilton police trained more DRE officers, the number of impaired by drug charges were up.

Police charged a total of 32 people in the first six months of this year, surpassing the 29 people charged at the same point of both 2016 and 2017, respectively.