An ethics academic has weighed into the controversy surrounding the drug-driving laws clogging the court system.
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The divisive issue has seen a heated debate emerge on The Daily Advertiser’s Facebook page, with many voicing their concerns.
It comes as an Advertiser poll, asking if the 'driving with illicit drug in bloodstream' charge was an attack on civil liberties, revealed 81.87 per cent of 1401 respondents believed the legislation encroached on their rights.
Doctor Mary Walker – who is a research assistant at the Centre for Applied and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University – said there were holes in roadside drug testing.
The problem with roadside drug testing, according to Dr Walker, is that there was no reliable method to test impairment from drug use, except in alcohol testing.
“For alcohol, we have reasonable evidence that certain levels of alcohol in the blood do indicate impairment,” Dr Walker said.
“We don't have this information for other drugs. In the case of most illicit drugs, the research to match up the test results with impairment just hasn’t been done.”
Dr Walker said any drug test involved some compromise on a person’s liberties.
“We accept the imposition in particular situations where these liberties are outweighed by the aim of the testing,” Dr Walker said.
“For roadside alcohol and drug testing, most of us would accept that ensuring that there are no alcohol- or drug-impaired people driving on our roads is a sufficiently important aim as to justify the imposition on individual liberties.”
But Dr Walker said cannabis research indicated there might not be a way to measure impairment through a drug test.
“Drug tests can’t tell us whether a person is ‘under the influence’,” Dr Walker said.
“The way people metabolise cannabis seems to be quite individual and to depend on a range of background factors.
“Saliva testing is likely to be slightly better in this regard than other tests, like blood or urine testing, as it does have a shorter window of detection.
“But the ‘24-hour’ window which most drug test manufacturers report is not likely to be correct, at least for many people.”
Dr Walker said the NSW Road Transport Act seemed to disregard the question of how to make tests capture impairment rather than presence of a drug.
“It seems to me that legislators have modelled this part of the Act on the section dealing with driving with the presence of (prescribed concentration of) alcohol in a person’s breath or blood.