One in 10 Manitoba drivers tested positive for drug use

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This article was published 15/03/2017 (2879 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s no secret that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government are forging ahead to legalize marijuana.

And it’s also no surprise that the Pallister Conservatives are concerned about that move — so much so that they are planning to introduce legislation today to address health and safety issues in advance of the federal legislation.

But what wasn’t known was the degree to which Manitobans were under the influence while driving until a controversial Manitoba Public Insurance survey released on Wednesday showed that one in ten drivers had drugs in their system.

More than 1,200 drivers were voluntarily and anonymously surveyed by MPI last fall. Of the 10 per cent who tested positive, slightly more than half showed marijuana use, 31 per cent tested positive for cocaine, and 12 per cent showed opioid use. In total, 124 people tested positive for drug use. But while the MPI report offers the province a statistical starting point, it doesn’t actually clarify how many Manitobans are too drugged to drive and getting behind the wheel anyway.

The results are “concerning,” said Ward Keith, vice-president at MPI, but “these results are not the number of drivers who were necessarily impaired by drugs.”

Drivers were surveyed over four nights across five cities — Winnipeg, Brandon, Steinbach, Portage la Prairie and Thompson — as part of the automobile insurer’s controversial roadside survey program. Police officers conducting routine Checkstops asked drivers if they wanted to participate, but critics called the police invovlement coercive, saying it would skew the results. Researchers also came under fire for offering free gas coupons to participants. Ultimately, Keith said nearly 500 people declined. The 1,230 people who said yes then underwent a breathalyzer test and a saliva sample. Prairie Research Associates conducted the research at a cost of $150,000. MPI says all results were destroyed after testing.

While researchers tested for a variety of drugs, they were only able to quantify the concentration of marijuana, meaning that drivers who tested positive for cocaine or opioid use could have been almost entirely sober or dangerously high. If a driver tested positively for marijuana, researchers would then test the concentration of THC, the drug’s “psychoactive ingredient.”

Keith called those results the survey’s “most compelling.”

Sixty-two per cent of drivers, about 40 people in total, who tested positive for marijuana showed THC levels of 10 nanograms or higher, he said, which “is sufficient to impair their driving ability.” In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, drivers can be charged with drugged driving if they show just five nanograms. But even then, a spokesman with Colorado’s department of transportation said he wasn’t sure if “that standard is scientifically based.”

In Colorado, spokesman Sam Cole said police test for drugged driving using a blood test, the results of which can take weeks to come back. Similarly, Keith said the saliva analysis takes time, making it less than practical for cops pulling over drivers they suspect of being impaired.

“The kind of testing that was done through this survey was not replicable,” he said, “and was not probably done in a cost-effective way.”

The Trudeau government says it is “committed to severely punish those who operate a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana. Roadside drug testing is one of the rools that can help law enforcement officers assess impaired drivers and get them off the road.”

Public Safety Canada is currently spearheading a pilot project across the country looking at ways to more effectively test for drugs roadside. Multiple police services are participating, including the Ontario Provincial Police, the Toronto Police Service, the Vancouver Police Department, Halifax Regional Police Service, and select RCMP detachments. Similar to the MPI survey, no volunteers will be held accountable for their results. The pilot project is expected to help set standards for police across the country.

A report on the pilot program will be released in the coming months, a Public Safety Canada spokesman said. “It will provide information on how the devices work in the context of Canadian climate and law enforcement practices… However, legislative changes will be required before police forces can begin using the devices in actual enforcement situations.”

“Currently, when a police officer suspects that a person is impaired by alcohol or drugs, he or she conducts a series of behavioural and physical tests… If there are probably grounds, a toxilogical test is performed,” the spokesman said.

Manitoba RCMP did not return requests for comment about drugged driving and the WInnipeg Police Service said it was “not aware” of MPI’s survey.

That roadside drug testing is still in pilot phases across the country should serve as a warning to the Manitoba government to go slow with future legislation, said Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba and an early critic of the MPI survey.

“We really want evidence-based policy,” Schafer said. “The public will want to know, does the evidence exist and do we have effective means of enforcing such a law? Because just to have the law if we can’t easily measure the impairment — if we can’t agree on what counts as impairment, if we can’t measure it accurately — that could cause more harm than good.”

 

with files from Mia Rabson

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca