City police taking wise approach to pot testing

While we’ll undoubtedly see jurisdictions across Canada scrambling to acquire and deploy a new saliva-testing device designed to detect cannabis, it’s heartening to see Calgary police taking a much more prudent approach to the matter.

It would be ideal to have a reliable roadside testing device that could detect drug impairment, but a device that falls short of that could end up causing more problems than it solves. Therefore, trepidation is warranted.

Last week, the federal justice minister gave her official blessing to the Drager DrugTest 5000, making it the first such device to receive federal approval. However, just because the device has federal approval does not mean there’s a federal mandate for law-enforcement agencies to make use of it — that discretion still lies with individual police forces.

Obviously, we don’t want drivers on the road who are impaired by any drug, legal or otherwise. But it’s impairment that the law criminalizes, and if we’re not detecting actual impairment, then we have no business treating people like criminals. The mere presence of THC, the main psychoactive agent in cannabis, does not necessarily indicate impairment. The Drager DrugTest 5000 can, in theory, address the former, but it cannot provide anything definitive as to the latter. THC can linger in the body, and a positive reading tells us nothing about when the individual used cannabis or whether they are legally impaired.

There is a question of just how accurate these readings are. Eating or drinking within 10 minutes of a test being administered can skew the results. Also, the device is designed to operate at temperatures above 4 C — a problem in a country with a climate like Canada’s.

A study done this year in Norway on the device’s effectiveness found “fairly large proportions of false-positive or false-negative results” when comparing the saliva tests to actual blood test results.

Given the pressure on police forces to be prepared to crack down on cannabis-impaired driving once legalization kicks in, it would not be surprising to see law-enforcement agencies ignore these concerns. Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case here in Calgary.

Following word of Ottawa’s approval of the Drager DrugTest 5000, the Calgary Police Service made it clear that for now, the primary method for detecting cannabis-impaired drivers will be the tried-and-true standardized field sobriety testing.

This is a sensible approach. After all, cannabis is not coming into existence as of Oct. 17. Where was this panic about roadside testing devices five years ago? Or 20 years ago? Or 40?

Legalization doesn’t necessarily change the problem. One major study released last year found that “changes in motor-vehicle crash fatality rates for Washington and Colorado (the first two U.S. states to legalize cannabis) were not statistically different from those in similar states without recreational marijuana legalization.” Canada has the added advantage of all jurisdictions legalizing at the same time, thus avoiding the influx of pot enthusiasts that those two states experience.

And keep in mind that alcohol-impaired driving is still by far the biggest problem. According to Statistics Canada, alcohol accounts for 95 per cent of impaired-driving charges, with all other drugs making up the other five per cent.

That’s not to suggest we ignore the problem or approach it with apathy, but rather, to suggest that the fears of chaos being unleashed Oct. 17 are rather misplaced.

The CPS acknowledges the Drager DrugTest 5000, or a device similar to it, may ultimately be put to use, but more than likely in a secondary or supportive role. Again, this is sensible.

It’s almost a certainty that the use of the device itself, and the impaired-driving charges spawned by its readings, will be the subject of numerous court challenges.

The more we can avoid compounding that problem, the better off we’ll be once this all sorts itself out.

Where was this panic about roadside testing … years ago?