Is drug driving still difficult to prove?

Third Opinion · 7 May 2014 at 09:18

Reason I say this is for a start you often see on these cop programs the police stop cars and smell cannabis, find people smoking it or carry out searches that end in a street caution/arrest. After it is all sorted the driver seems to go on their way in his/her car.

I worked nights for quite awhile and the car park was very dark and secluded. We often see on the CCTV the Corsa/Saxo boys pull up in the early hours. You could often see the plumes of smoke coming out of the windows.

Quite a few times the police would pull in on a patrol and stop and talk to them. Watching on the CCTV you could see them carry out searches and issue tickets that I assumed were street cautions.

They always drove off. In the morning we would clearly see the joint dog ends left all over the place.

Now if that was me in my car swigging from a bottle of spirits or a can of beer
I would be rightfully breathalyzed.

I am sure it isn't being ignored. Is it just we still don't have an effective way to test somebodies level of intake of these drugs?

Anyone else have any knowledge/thoughts on this?

EdwardTeach · 7 May 2014 at 09:26

You cant test for drugs as easily as alcohol with a breathalyser. They can be tested indirectly though, e.g examine the suspects eyes, ask them to walk in a straight line etc.
For direct tests you could in theory do something like a urine test or blood test( though that is very invasive) and might not give very accurate results, drugs like cocaine are processed very quickly whereas canabis could give a positive in a test, though the suspect may not have smoked for weeks and could have been driving unimpaired.

snapdragon69 · 7 May 2014 at 09:29

There are simple saliva test kits which are patented and made in the UK for the rest of the world, but not of evidential/legal use here.

EdwardTeach · 7 May 2014 at 14:22

snapdragon69 said:
There are simple saliva test kits which are patented and made in the UK for the rest of the world, but not of evidential/legal use here.

They can only demonstrate that drugs have been taken at some point, they cant prove that someone is actually under the influence.

Burnsy2023 · 7 May 2014 at 15:55

The Police can only can only test for impairment though a FIT test, similar to a sobriety test that they use in the states but can only be administered by specially trained officers.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/is-there-a-police-test-for-drug-driving.aspx?CategoryID=87

hurfdurf · 7 May 2014 at 18:14

One of the times I was stopped I was asked if I would voluntarily let them take a swab from my car to try and get stats on whether or not people were drug driving. I agreed as long as they ignored the lack of front plate which they did. I thought it was a scam and they were trying to do me for something serious underhandedly but at the same time knew that I don't carry drugs in an mx5 with no front plate. Hearing about the difficulties the police are having sorting out drug driving makes me think she was telling the truth.

Scythe · 7 May 2014 at 18:23

EdwardTeach said:
They can only demonstrate that drugs have been taken at some point, they cant prove that someone is actually under the influence.

This, I get drug tested at work using these saliva kits and they just prove if someone has taken drugs within the last week or so (depends on the drug). Stuff like cough medicines and etc can cause a false positive too due to similarities in chemicals, they have to be sent off for further examination in a lab which can distinguish what's illegal and what's not.