Tough pot rules signal new frontier for Ontario
The impending legalization of marijuana has the Ontario government planning to toughen the penalties for driving drunk, not just stoned.
The changes, announced by Premier Kathleen Wynne and Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca Monday morning, will particularly affect drivers under age 21, novice drivers with limited licences and commercial drivers. None of them will be permitted to have any alcohol or cannabis in their systems if they’re driving, and violations will be treated with harsher roadside punishments — steeper cash penalties and, in some cases, longer driving suspensions.
Technically, these are “administrative penalties,” not fines, which means police can apply them unilaterally, on the spot.
“Let me be clear: Driving while impaired is not acceptable and will not be tolerated,” Del Duca said at the Queen’s Park news conference, his manner grim.
In Ontario, cases of impaired driving have been declining. Between 2008 and 2014, the last year for which the province has published complete figures, the number of criminal convictions for impaired driving fell from about 7,000 to about 3,400. The number of roadside licence suspensions declined from about 17,600 to about 13,600.
But the trailblazer in North America everyone looks to is Colorado, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2014 and has seen the number of road fatalities involving drivers with cannabis in their systems more than double.
So, first thing, no pot at all for youth drivers, those with graduated licences, or at the wheels of commercial vehicles. They’ll test your spit with a (yet-to-be-approved) cannabis-detection device and if they find any, it’ll mean a three-day licence suspension on the spot, a $250 not-afine fine and possible referral for re-education. Graduated-licence drivers might have to start over again. Being caught a second time will mean a seven-day suspension and a $350 penalty; a third time will mean a 30-day suspension and $450 penalty.
The reason for treating novice and younger drivers more harshly is that they’re more likely to get into collisions and especially need their wits about them, the government says. Commercial drivers are more likely to pilot larger, heavier vehicles that can do more harm in a crash.
The same penalties will apply to all drivers with blood-alcohol readings over 0.05 and those who fail sobriety tests because of any kind of intoxication. That toughens the current financial penalty of $198. And drivers caught with blood-alcohol readings over 0.08 will face the same 90-day suspensions they do now, but increased financial penalties of $550.
Toughening the drunk-driving penalties at the same time as bringing in new drugged-driving rules is meant to make them easier to remember and understand, Del Duca said, because there won’t be one set of penalties for alcohol and one for pot.
The transportation minister was the designated heavy, taking up the role shared by the finance minister, health minister and attorney general in a similar presentation about a week ago on how Ontario will sell pot. The subtext of all four ministerial performances has been that they’re doing this because the feds are making them and they really hate it.
This is a new frontier. How, for instance, are drivers who are allowed to have smoked a little pot to know just how stoned they can expect to get? That’ll take education and a clear labelling regime for how strong different strains of pot are. Even so, people are notoriously bad at judging how drunk they get.
“There’s a lot of work yet to be done and potency is one part of that,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said.