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villa-ru-
Kind of the point of my post. It is now possible to fail a drugs test and be banned from driving when not under the influence of drugs where previously a police officer could only arrest you for driving under the influence of drugs and I believe that using that in combination with the new fashion for pulling black people over because of a made up claim of smelling of weed, could be very problematic.
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Possession of banned drugs is illegal, being under the influence while driving is illegal
Not sure consuming drugs is illegal, so tests that show someone has taken a drug, but doesn’t discern whether it’s a sufficient amount to impair driving is going to be a great test.
Stonehedge
Alf0nse
There's another element to these pretend drug stops that also makes me nervous.
The relatively new road side drug tests are incredibly sensitive. The law was changed to make it an offence to drive with a certain amount of cannabis in your system regardless of whether your driving is impaired. The bar was set so low that it is now perfectly possible to smoke cannabis and fail a road side drug test several days later when you have a tiny fraction of the amount in your system that could cause your driving to be impaired. There are stories of people failing road side drug tests over a week after they last took drugs. The government claim that cannabis should be undetectable in Saliva after 12 hours but in reality this is utter nonsense.
Everyody metabolises drugs differently. The government have not provided access to any self testing system that could be used to assess whether you are clean or not. It feels very much like a change to drug law that could lead to people being stripped of their driving license despite taking sensible precautions to ensure that your driving is not compromised.
I'd feel a little less suspicious about this law change if there was actually a way for somebody to self test before driving, but the police and government have so far refused to provide access to their test methods. The cannabis equivalent of a breathalyser doesn't exist.
This basically means that somebody could smoke a joint on a Friday night, be stopped under the false pretence of smelling of Cannabis on the Monday, and fail a drugs test and be banned from driving despite being in no way impaired. It feels like a system that could be abused or lead to disproportionate punishment for what shouldn't even be an offence.