It has been close to a week since Ottawa paved the way for fully legal marijuana this fall and a local lawyer is predicting police will come out swinging this October, at least when it comes to impaired driving.
But she doesn’t think the blitz will last or that enforcement will be an issue over the long term.
“I actually don’t see it being as big of a crisis as the federal government has been suggesting that it is going to be,” says Kyla Lee, a criminal lawyer in Vancouver who specializes in driving law.
“We have existing administrative schemes in British Columbia, as well as existing federal criminal law to deal with drug-impaired driving that are already easy for police to enforce and are effective.”
Lee points to the series of roadside physical coordination tests, which officers can administer very quickly.
“The first is called horizontal gaze nystagmus, which is basically tracking a pen with your eyes. The second is standing on one leg for 30 second and measuring your balance. The third is walking the line,” she tells NEWS 1130.
“Police are permitted to rely on those results to take a person off the road for 24 hours if they don’t perform well. Alternatively they can use the results of those tests to make an arrest and do further testing at the police station.”
But Lee says officers don’t need a coordination test to take a driver off the road.
“As long as the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that a person’s ability to drive is impaired or affected by a drug, then the officer can issue a 24 hour prohibition. That can even be pulling someone over after observing some unusual driving and engaging in conversation at which point they learn some information that leads them to believe the driver has recently consumed drugs. That could be smelling burned marijuana or observing some physical coordination problems,” she explains.
Lee feels police will be using those tools a lot after recreational marijuana is legalized October 17.
Read the entire news story here.