DRUGS

Doobs of hazard
As Canada prepares to legalize marijuana, it is totally
unprepared to deal with the most dangerous side
eect: stoned drivers and how to stop them

Tyler Manaigre had been

BY CHARLIE GILLIS
smoking upthat much was quickly estab-
lished. He admitted to the RCMP corporal
who stopped him near Steinbach, Man.,
that hed had just a little bit of pot that
consistent with use as a makeshift pipe.
Manaigre, 25, had been driving cautiously
that cold November night. But it turns out
that a guy doing 20 km/h under the speed
limit on a preacher-straight stretch of high-
precious few Canadians are convicted of can-
nabis-impaired driving. Sundell is what police
call a drug-recognition expert (DRE)an o-
cer specially trained to detect and identify
substances a driver has taken, thus establish-
PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHAN CYPRYS

night, assuring Corp. Terry Sundell that it
was like, way earlier. But the tell-tale signs
lay around the back seat of his 2012 Ford
Focus: Ziploc bags bearing pot-leaf motifs;
a beer can bearing a burn mark and crum-
pled in a fashion Sundell later described as
way at 1:49 a.m. is more peculiar to Mountie
eyes than someone blowing by at top speed.
So, notwithstanding Manaigres otherwise
awless driving, Sundell icked on the roll-
ing lights and pulled him over.
What followed is an object lesson in why
ing legal grounds to demand a urine or blood
sample. He asked Manaigre to perform a
standard roadside sobriety testnose touches,
line-walking and the likeand thought the
young man performed them poorly. So he
arrested Manaigre and drove him to the Stein-

14 O C T O B E R 1 7, 2 0 1 6

bach detachment for the more comprehen-
FOLLOWING SPREAD: PHOTOGRAPHS BY COLE BURSTON
sive evaluation Sundell had just weeks earlier
learned to administer.
There, Manaigre, who bears passing resem-
blance to the actor Jonah Hill, gamely went
through a battery of eye inspections, heart-
rate checks, walk-and-turn tests and demands
to stand on one leg while counting down 30
seconds. As the clock ticked past 3 a.m., he
started to struggle. During the one-leg test,
he got to 14 Mississippis before wobbling
and putting his right foot down. He couldnt
cross his eyes on request. When asked to stand
on his right leg, he had to put his le foot
down three times to maintain his balance.
These missteps and others convinced Sun-
dell he had grounds to demand a urine sam-
ple, aer which Manaigre came clean: in a
statement to police, he admitted to smoking
a little less than a half-gram of marijuana, the
equivalent of two regular-sized joints, between
12:30 and 1 a.m. Hed been using a bong at
MACLEANS MAGAZINE
National
I can drive: In a recent survey, 44 per cent
said marijuana doesnt aect driving ability
his sisters house, he said, and the buzz had
been pretty good. Only in the back of Sun-
dells police car had it worn o, he said, and
even at the detachment he felt a little bit tipsy.
So Sundell swore out a charge of impaired
driving by drugsan accusation buttressed a
few days later when Manaigres urine test came
back positive for cannabis. To unschooled
eyes, Manaigre looked to be in trouble.
Yet aer hearing the evidence at a trial last
year, Provincial Court Judge Cynthia Devine
let him o. I am satised that he consumed
marijuana, she said in a decision issued in
December. I am even satised that he felt
the eects at some point. But I am not satis-
ed beyond a reasonable doubt that his abil-
ity to drive was impaired. One problem with
the Crowns case: Manaigres driving didnt
seem all that bad. Sure he was travelling under
the speed limit, the judge noted, but it wasnt
like he was all over the road. As for his poor
performance on Sundells physical tests, the
judge described the exercises as seemingly
complicated and dicult, adding wryly: I
suspect they might well challenge the balance
of many completely sober people.
Here, then, is Canadas state of readiness
mere months before its era of lawfully access-
ible weed is supposed to begin. A man who
admits to smoking marijuana an hour before
drivingwho shows outward signs of doing
so; who tests positive for the drug; who admits
hes feeling tipsy; who has diculty performing
the physical tests designed to detect drug
useis not necessarily breaking the law.
To pot users, this might sound like a tri-
umph of legal discretion. Cannabis is not
booze, they point out. Its eects can vary
from person to person, and it acts dierently
on the brain over time. But to safety advo-
cates, the uncertainty surrounding cases like
Manaigres shows how unprepared Canada
is for the greatest hazard to public safety that
legalization implies. More stoned drivers on
the roads, they warn, will be a near-certain
side eect of the Trudeau governments plan
a hypothesis founded on tragic experience
whenever liquor sales have been liberalized
to make booze more available. Will the costs
of legalization be measured in human lives?
Already, roadside surveys suggest more
people drive under the inuence of drugs
than alcohol, with cannabis by far the most
common. In a 2014 survey, 10.2 per cent of
randomly screened drivers in Ontario tested
positive for at least one drug other than alco-
15

hol, compared to four per cent for alcohol
alone (many had used both). Of those who
took drugs, 43.6 per cent were positive for
cannabis. In 2012, fully 40 per cent of those
killed in car accidents in Canada tested posi-
tive for recent use of drugsnearly half of
them for cannabisversus the 35.6 per cent
whod been drinking.
Bringing high drivers to justice has proven
tough, though, because marijuana dees the
measures developed over the decades to com-
bat drunk driving. Unlike alcohol, THC con-
tent in the blood cant yet be measured with
a cheap and reliable breath test. While urine
tests can reveal THC, they leave open the
question of how recently it was smoked (the
metabolites detected linger up to 12 hours
aer the person was feeling any eect from
the drug). That leaves police with the costly,
invasive and legally fraught task of obtaining
blood samples if they want an accurate pic-
ture of how high the person was, and when
the eect of the drug was strongest. Even if
those samples come back positive, theres no
guarantee of conviction, because Canada has
no hard-and-fast limit of THC content in
drivers blood like it does for alcohol. It doesnt
even have scientic consensus regarding how
much is too much.
In the absence of a blood-THC limit, the
Crown must prove the drug has impaired the
Testing: DrugWipe 5S is eectively used in
Germany and the U.K.; it scans for the pres-
ence of cannabis, opiates, cocaine and more
16
National
persons ability to drive. For that, it relies
heavily on the evidence of DREs like Sundell,
who had completed a two-week course in
Jacksonville, Fla., just weeks before he pulled
Manaigre over (a request to interview Sundell
went unreturned, while Manaigre declined
comment through his lawyer). Their 12-step
examinations are time-consuming, involving
more than 100 dierent pieces of physical
and psychological information. And like
everything else in the impaired-driving enforce-
ment scheme, they are under attack.
Next week, the Supreme Court of Canada
will hear the appeal of accused drugged-driver
Carson Bingley, who in 2009 drove the wrong
way up an Ottawa street and hit another car
in a parking lot. Among the questions now
before the court: whether a special hearing
must be held at every trial before DREs testi-
mony can be admittedand whether, legally
speaking, they are experts at all. Anxious
to preserve ocers from courtroom grillings
on the science underlying their work, Crown
lawyers suggest the courts instead treat DRE
testimony as lay opinion, like that of any
person reading signs of intoxication.
Small wonder, then, so few Canadians are
sent up for driving high. Last year, police
charged just 1,575 people with drug-impaired
operation of a vehicle, vessel or aircra, com-
pared to 50,853 for suspected drinking and
driving. Statistics Canada doesnt break out
the conviction rate of drugged drivers. But the
charge count seems astonishingly low for illicit
behaviour known to be so prevalent. Part of
the problem, says Neil Dubord, chief of police
in Delta, B.C., is that relatively few resources
go to keeping high drivers o the road. His
200-member force, for example, has just one
DRE, and training more would come at a high
price: two weeks off duty per officer, plus
another week or two for eld certication,
aer which he or she must be accredited by
the International Association of Chiefs of
Police. Total estimated cost: $17,000.
The result can be seen on a typical Friday
night in Delta, a fast-growing city in B.C.s
Lower Mainland where pot use is common-
place. I may have 15 or 18 ocers on the
road, says Dubord, whose role as chair of
the trac safety committee for the B.C. Asso-
ciation of Chiefs of Police has landed him at
the centre of the stoned-driving dilemma.
They may do 20 or 25 vehicle stops. They
may meet six or seven people, say aer mid-
night, who have too much on board [their
bodies] when it comes to marijuana, prescrip-
tion or other drugs. But unless those people
are showing signicant signs of impairment,
I guarantee you therell be four or ve who
walk away without any consequence.
If Dubord sounds worried, its because
he and other cops are caught in a conun-
drum. Legalization may reect Canadian
societys more enlightened attitude toward
marijuana, and the limited dangers it poses.
But widespread belief in the stus essential
harmlessness is blinding people to the men-
ace it poses on the roads. In a recent survey
of Canadians by the State Farm insurance
company, fully 44 per cent of respondents
said they didnt believe that marijuana use
aects their ability to drive safely, versus 42
per cent who said it does (14 per cent werent
sure).
The diculty police have detecting stoned
driving doesnt help. Screaming headlines
about accidents caused by high motorists are
rare, because many drug-impaired drivers
are also drunk, and prosecuted as such. Young
people, in particular, tend to doubt the dan-
gers of drugged driving. Three years ago,
researchers with the Canadian Centre on
Substance Abuse were appalled to hear teen-
agers in focus groups claiming that smoking
up actually made them drive better. I get in
the car [with my friends] and Im, like, Are
you high? one girl in junior high school
told them. And theyre, like, Yeah man. reported that people on
And they dont crash. They just drive and,
like, the more high you are, like, you focus.
Added a boy in senior high: It started to
make me more cautious.
Such ideas are rooted not in denial but the
peculiar eect THC has on people trying to
do complex tasks. While drunk drivers lose
awareness of their impaired state, many stoned
drivers overestimate their level of impairment,
according to a 2008 study of people across
Canada in treatment for drug addiction. Driv-
ing under the speed limit counts among what
the researchers described as compensatory
strategies, oen employed to avoid detec-
tion. In laymans terms, high drivers get
paranoid.
That makes them no less a menace. Trials
performed in driving simulators have found
that pot reduces drivers ability to stay in their
lanes and manage their speed (the ip side of
the slow-driver scenario: speeding is the most
common reason drugged motorists get pulled
over). High drivers also tend to obsess on one
tasksay, their following distance from cars
aheadwhile ignoring equally important fac-
tors such as the positions and speeds of the
vehicles around them.
That compensatory
instinct gives them sloth- Marijuana defies
like reaction times: they
take too long to decide to
the measures
pass, or to brake for developed over the
changing lights. In the
1980s, U.S. researchers
decades to combat
drunk driving
high dosages of pot were
a lot more likely than sober drivers to crash
into sudden obstacles.
All of these eects are more pronounced
when weed is consumed in combination with
alcohol, as is the case in an estimated 19 per
cent of impaired cases. However nonchalant
drugged drivers might be about the dangers,
their representation among Canadas highway
dead is on the rise. Since 2000, the number of
drivers fatally injured in accidents who tested
positive for drugs has risen by about 14 per
cent. These stats include stoned drivers who
werent at fault. But long-time impaired-driv-
ing researchers are quick to point out that car
crashes are the No. 1 cause of death related
to cannabis. People who overdose on pot
arent going to die, says Douglas Beirness, a
senior research associate with the Canadian
Centre on Substance Abuse. Not unless
they do something stupidlike get behind
the wheel of a car.
Certainly, the evidence of harm is strong
enough that governments across the coun-
try are scrambling to ready themselves for
the end of prohibition. As of this week, driv-
ers in Ontario who fail a roadside sobriety
test due to suspected drug use will face an
immediate $180 ne and three-day licence
suspensiona change made possible by
provincial jurisdiction over highway and
trac law. The administrative penalty, which
reects those for suspected alcohol use, will
rise to a seven-day suspension on second
oence, and a 30-day loss of licence on third.
Failing a DRE evaluation will yield a 90-day
suspension.
Meantime, driving high has emerged as
one of the most pressing issues confronting
the Trudeau governments federal task force
on marijuana legalization, led by former
MACLEANS MAGAZINE
Liberal justice minister Anne McLellan. If
Canada is to limit blood-THC content like
the one for alcohol, or allow police to test
for drugs at the roadside, it will need amend-
ments to the Criminal Code. A discussion
paper recently released by the task force
raises those possibilities, while safety advo-
cates point to Colorado and Washington,
which backstopped marijuana liberalization
with blood-THC maximums for drivers of
ve nanograms per milli-
litre. To prove a driver is
over the limit, police in
those states must obtain
special warrants against
drivers who have failed
roadside sobriety tests,
then take them to the
nearest police station,
rehouse or hospital to
draw blood samples.
Opinion is divided as to the wisdom of
THC limits. Supporters include Dubord, the
Delta, B.C., police chief, who believes they
short-circuit pointless debate over whether
some drivers drive well when theyre high. I
dont just think it would help, he says, I
think its critical. But Beirness, the CCSA
researcher, warns that any limit in Canada
would face court challenges over when the
THC level was measured, and whether it
shows the person was above the limit when
he was driving. In many cases, he notes,
hours have passed by the time police get to
the point of obtaining blood, which helps
explain why 80 per cent of drivers arrested
for suspected drugged driving test under ve
nanograms. Everybody wants to do the same
things for cannabis that we did for alcohol,
he concludes. Its not going to work.
Chris wouldnt risk piloting his skate-
board right now, never mind driving a car.
Im quite stoned, the 29-year-old says mat-
ter-of-factly. The situation I am in
is . . . strange. Hes gotten high at Macleans
request, rolling joints from a packet of so-
called Strawberry Castle obtained from a
Toronto dispensary, and toking up at midday
in a city park. Now puy-eyed and talkative,
the tech company employee (he asked that
we not use his full name) says he wants to do
his part to discourage stoned driving. But the
point of this exercise is to try out a saliva test-
ing kit meant to help cops identify drugged
drivers at the roadside, within minutes of
stopping them.
So, half an hour aer hes lit his second
joint, Chris presents his tongue for a Drug-
Wipe 5S, a German-made device which scans
17
 National
for the presence of cannabis, opiates, cocaine, tion. But for the system to work, Parliament
amphetamine and methamphetamine. Its would have to adopt a specied blood-THC
not unlike a home pregnancy test. A nger- limit, eliminating any question of whether
punch to a plastic bubble releases a chemical the person was impaired.
reagent, and within minutes two red lines DrugWipe is one of three roadside saliva
appear on the cannabis strip, conrming tests police are trying out with a view to hav-
that Chris has indeed partaken of the herb. ing them approved by the time marijuana
DrugWipe shows positive when a persons legalization takes eect next spring. Though
blood-THC level is at least 0.1 ng/mldouble Canadian regulators would require proof of
the limit in Colorado and Washington. If their reliability before they could be approved,
that means I shouldnt drive in this condi- a lot of that heavy liing has been done. Drug-
tion, says our subject, steadying himself on Wipe, for one, is already being used in Ger-
a picnic table, I wholeheartedly concur. many and the U.K., notes Abe Verghis, CEO
The speed with which hes been tested is of Toronto-based Alcohol Countermeasure
important, because unlike alcohol, canna- Systems, the devices North American dis-
biss action on the brain tributor. In lab testing, it
is short-lived. Studies has proven 100 per cent
show maximal effect People who overdose accurate, and in early
from a single dose occurs
20-40 minutes aer use,
on pot arent going to roadside trials, it identi-
ed seven out of 10 driv-
while impairment is over die unless they do ers who had used canna-
within 2.5 hours. Thats
an enormous legal prob-
something stupidlike bis. Finnish researchers
reported false positives
lem because, Beirness get behind the wheel and negatives in 2011, but
they acknowledged the
devices sensitivity has
improved.
So whatever the pit-
falls, Canadas response
to drugged driving is likely
to look like that for drunk
driving. In its submission
to McLellans task force,
Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers (M.A.D.D.) has
called on government to
authorize both roadside
testing of oral uid and to
set a blood-THC limit, the
exact level to be based on
scientic consensus. The
Checks: Police are not equipped to accurately test for cannabis use group also argued that
government could keep
points out, it can take that much time to get marijuana from the hands of young people,
a suspect driver to a police station to perform who are most likely to toke and drive, by set-
a drug-recognition test. ting the age to legally purchase marijuana at 21.
A reliable oral uid test like DrugWipe They are by no means unique ideasColo-
could change that by establishing what law- rado and Washington adopted a 21-year age
yers refer to as recent use. Safety advocates limit, the same as for liquor in those states.
liken them to the hand-held breath-alcohol But the cost of enforcing them could dwarf
detectors many police carry in their cars: they that of detecting and prosecuting drunk driv-
are not, on their own, evidence of intoxica- ers. While alcohol breathalyzers cost thou-
tion, but rather grounds for further tests. sands up front, the price of a breath test falls
With a change to the Criminal Code, goes once the machines been paid for, to little
the thinking, a positive result on DrugWipe more than the eight cents for each drivers
could allow police to demand a blood test sterile blow tube. One DrugWipe kit, by com-
or better yet, a second, more accurate saliva parison, retails for about $40, taxes in, while
test based on more advanced technology. a subsequent blood test would add much
Those results, in turn, would stand up in more, including the labour costs of a quali-
court, eliminating the need for a DRE evalua- ed medical professional to extract it.
18 O C T O B E R 1 7, 2 0 1 6
Thats before defence lawyers start putting
the new rules to a constitutional test. Robert
Solomon, a Western University law professor
who helped write M.A.D.D.s submission,
anticipates that any THC limit will be chal-
lenged as arbitrary, given cannabiss varying
eect on individuals, and continuing scien-
tic debate as to what the limit should be.
The response, he says, will be simple.
Abritrary? Yes, just like the speed limit is
arbitrary. You might drive at 120 km/h way
more safely than I do at 90, but try using that
as a defence.
Still, even to legal hawks, some clear lines
in the sand would be an improvement. One
aw in the DRE model, says Michael Dyck,
the Winnipeg lawyer who defended Manai-
gre, is that it can feed otherwise groundless
suspicion on the part of the testing ocer.
Its conrmation bias, he says. The o-
cer is already of the view this person is or
could be under the inuence of drugs. Theyre
looking for evidence that supports their
belief, so they can lay a charge. Theyre going
to discount or discredit or give less weight
to evidence that points away from their
belief.
Manaigre, Dyck says, presented just such
a case. He showed no signs of swaying or
disorientation through his long night at
the police station. But nor is he a yoga mas-
ter, notes the lawyer, so when the time came
to stand on one foot, point the other for-
ward while counting out secondsall in the
wee hours of the morninghe started to
topple.
Perhaps, but the only thing cut and dried
in the land of pot is the weed itself, and Man-
aigre surely regrets a few of the decisions he
made that nightin particular, his choice to
get behind the wheel aer hed been smok-
ing up. If nothing else, he might steer clear
of Steinbach, pop. 13,500, which bills itself
as the Automobile City due to its surfeit of
car dealerships. Its worth the trip! pro-
claims a marketing slogan that for decades
has persuaded car-shopping Winnipeggers
to make the one-hour drive. When the era
of lawfully obtainable pot takes hold, the
merchants might wish to attach an asterisk
of the sort commonly seen in car ads. Oer
does not apply to everyone, the ne print
could read, nor to every kind of trip.
To see a video of Chris
RICK WILKING/REUTERS
(last name withheld)
taking a DrugWipe test,
see this weeks tablet
issue of Macleans
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