Minister supports drug driving exemption?
Candor Trust

Candor Trust members today begin their 140 hour famine, an hour for each drug driving fatality in a year, in protest against the loopholes in the new drug driving law which make enforcement 1000x more difficult in serious cases and deny justice to serious victims.

90 per cent of fatal crashes caused by drug impaired drivers will not be prosecuted under new legislation before the House. Recent cases such as the crash that killed pensioner Ron Duff on his mobility scooter in Christchurch suburbs, nurse Mary Radley on SH1 near Picton, sportsman Kent Martin in Taranaki and pensioner Norm Luscombe near New Plymouth.

They won't be pursued in future as prosecutions for drug driving, except for class A drugs, are not going to be possible without both a driver impairment test and a blood test. But drivers hurt in an accident, which is usual in serious ones, cannot be made to take the impairment test.

The Transport Minister says the main purpose of the new law was to catch impaired drivers before they had accidents. "Once they have an accident they are up for a number of charges, including dangerous driving". "Driving while impaired' is to give police a roadside test to determine if someone should be driving," he asserts.

But Candor is not interested in victims of killers losing the right to appropriate drug driving prosecutions of their maimers and killers being made. It's a dangerously sick and immoral trade off for more of a budget to early detection. Removing capacity for serious prosecutions over drug driving will remove all deterrent effect.

The alternative charges of careless and dangerous driving which will be delivered to killer drug drivers who have missed blood testing - due to the new "injury" loophole preventing prerequisite impairment tests, will result in insane sentences, like orders to attend defensive driving.

Killer drug drivers like those who killed Ron, Mary, Kent and Norm need to be identified as such, publicised as such, sentenced as such, disqualified as such and imprisoned just like killer drink drivers. Anything else is legalising murder pure and simple.

Also a class of sedative drugs called benzodiazepine is not included in the list of drugs drivers can be prosecuted for under the new crime. These drugs are second only to alcohol and cannabis as a fatal crash cause, being responsible for about two dozen fatal crashes a year, a similar number to those involving methamphetamine.

Benzodiazepines are given priority in the anti drug driving legislation of all sane countries where road safety is treated seriously. The exclusion would tip any road safety scientist off to the NZ bill being a travesty.

Why politicians should desire to prevent drug driving killers from being detected, and facing the music in future that they have in the past is up for speculation - it's absurd, Kafkaesque the hunger strikers all agree.

It could be the prison squeeze, they could be soft on crime, could want to make more victims so St Johns is busy, maybe don't want to rehabilitate the most dangerous types on our roads... or truth be known they could just want to banish all statistical evidence of the problem, so that any future calls for random drug testing programs will perish evermore.

One thing that doesn't mystify members of the Campaign Against Drugs on Roads Trust, is the certain knowledge that they and future victims must not this week be alienated from their human right to fair crime and homicide investigations.

"We won't be written out of history - where there is only honorary law there is no justice". Interested Politicians may learn more about the issue, when the Trust mounts an exhibit at Parliament (weather permitting) before the third reading, and delivers to Representatives a letter plea and petition with several hundred signatures seeking upgrades to the bill.

ENDS

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