The government wants 50,000 roadside drug tests carried out every year. Haven’t we been here before?
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Bolstering the testing regime
The government has announced a crackdown on drink and drug drivers, following through on an election pledge to see thousands more roadside tests carried out each year. It’s part of the Road Policing Investment Programme, which confirmed $1.3 billion for road policing over the next three years. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan explained the key details, reporting that police will be tasked with performing 3.3m roadside alcohol tests and 50,000 roadside drug tests. To put those figures in context, while 3.2m alcohol tests were carried out last year, that’s actually an outlier. This chart compiled from police data and shared on Twitter shows that the number of alcohol breath tests dropped as low as 1.4m in 2018 (and again in 2020, though the country was under Covid restrictions for part of that year).
Ministry of Transport figures, meanwhile, show that the number of deaths caused by drunk or drugged drivers has been trending up, save for another dip during the Covid years.
The road to bringing in drug testing
Introducing roadside drug testing was a key pledge of National’s election campaign, though it’s been on the agenda for several years. In the run up to 2020’s cannabis referendum, which ultimately failed, there was a heightened focus on the impacts of drug driving. In 2019, reported Zane Small for Newshub, the then-Labour government sought public input on how to improve the drug testing regime. Several complexities were identified, such as that the tests cannot determine if a driver is actually impaired, like with alcohol breath testing. While Labour passed legislation in 2022 that would have allowed for random roadside drug testing, another roadblock was encountered when it was determined that a device capable of accurately recording results did not exist. A subsequent law change introduced a lab test to back up the roadside test, which Newsroom’s Emma Hatton described as a “workaround”. Earlier this year, former police minister Ginny Andersen defended her government’s work in the face of criticism from the current government, reported RNZ.
There are risks
Simeon Brown said yesterday he expected police to conduct 50,000 “oral fluid tests” during the first year of the new drug testing regime. That’s the same technology used in Australia and is permissible under the coalition’s updated legislation. Under the proposed law, anyone who failed two roadside drug tests would be suspended from driving for 12 hours and could face further penalties. An oral fluid sample would be sent for more sophisticated laboratory testing. But some have expressed concern that it could mean unfair penalisation. Maki Herbert, the co-leader of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, told Te Ao Māori News she’s worried that people using cannabis medicinally, or using certain anti-depressants that stay in the system for several days, could end up in the justice system as a result. She also questioned whether Māori could be unfairly targeted given they disproportionately make up criminal justice statistics. The Drug Foundation has previously expressed concern around people being unwittingly caught up by drug testing, reported RNZ’s Anneke Smith, noting that some medicinal cannabis users may not actually be impaired but could still report a positive result. In Australia, where roadside drug testing has existed in some states for two decades, an Adelaide man had his license cancelled earlier this year after a false positive claimed he had methamphetamine in his system, the ABC reported.
The road to zero?
The clampdown on drug and drunk drivers is part of a broader roading strategy by the coalition, though some have questioned whether all parts of that strategy are aligned. Earlier this year, as Newsroom’s Emma Hatton reported, the government scrapped the Road to Zero safety plan introduced by Labour. That plan targeted a 40% reduction in deaths and serious injuries on the roads from 2018 levels by 2030. It faced public and political scrutiny and the former government itself cooled on parts of the plan, Hatton reported. One part of that programme had involved widespread road speed reductions which the coalition has since made moves to reduce, angering road safety advocates. In a post in July, advocacy group Greater Auckland argued that the reversal of speed limit reductions would “cost lives” – the exact thing the government is aiming to stop by clamping down on drug and drunk drivers.