Drug Testing

Do you know under current law, police officers cannot demand a drug test of the driver charged in the death of your loved one? Even though the person you love is killed, and your life as you knew it is destroyed,  the person responsible can only have a drug test performed if the police officer can prove reasonable grounds. As absurd as this sounds, the death of another human being is not automatically considered reasonable grounds. This is not the fault of police. The law is at fault. Even though the person has robbed another human being of life and devastated a family forever, police at the accident scene can not demand a drug test because it is against the person’s charter of rights.

It is terribly one sided as your loved one that is killed has an autopsy performed, has their body inspected and probed to ensure they did not have a heart attack or were under any influence, but the other person charged with the accident can not have one demanded.  Basically, the victim has no rights but the charged offender has rights. This is a terrible insult to the families who are already forced to deal with the overwhelming pain for the rest of their lives. The law must be changed. If someone has killed another human being, a drug test must be mandatory. Police should not have to prove reasonable grounds. The person killed will have endless testing performed, so why not the person responsible. How would this make you feel if someone in your family was killed?

Also with a drug test not mandatory there leaves too much room for error. The police officer at the scene might feel the person responsible for the accident is incoherent or stumbling their feet because they have been in a tragic car accident, when really they are under the influence. Therefore, a person is able to walk away rather than potentially be charged with impaired driving causing death.

To make things even worse our government is currently not allowing police to demand a drug test even if they can prove reasonable grounds. Why you ask? Resources. The province is worried it will overburden the system. Therefore, if someone has been charged with killing your loved one in a tragic car accident and even if the police feel they are on drugs, the government won’t accept any blood, urine, or saliva samples to prove it. A memo was recently sent by a top bureaucrat at the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services to the OPP that said “As the projected workload will exceed current capabilities, the Centre of Forensic Services will immediately discontinue acceptance of all submission related to the Drug Evaluation and Classification program until the necessary capabilities are developed”  Do you still feel safe in your car knowing that drug impaired drivers are driving our roads and not being tested? Imagine if one of these drivers killed someone you loved, but the government would not accept the sample from police to prove they were under the influence?

A common issue brought up relating to drug testing, is that certain drugs stay in the system for a few weeks, so it hard to determine when the drug was taken. Then it is the government responsibility to find a test that provides information that is more accurate.

With today’s technology, there is no reason why this can’t be done. People are being killed every day on our road!

If police are not allowed to test people for drugs then impaired drivers will continue driving. Keep that in mind next time you drive. Drug Impaired driving is obviously not a high priority for our government. If there was a string of murders in your area, imagine the government stating “we can not pursue this because we don’t have the resources to investigate it”

The law needs to be changed immediately to make our roads safer for all of Canadians. Drug testing needs to be reinstated immediately and must be mandatory when a death has occurred.