Fools rush in to cannabis debate

When Don Brash said he was "haunted" by the police time spent making criminals of 400,000 New Zealand "who are harming no one", which could be better employed hunting "real criminals", he forgot one important fact. The NZ Drug Foundation has reported that 52% of male smokers aged 18-24 drive under influence of cannabis, almost doubling the drunk-drive rate.

Approximately one hundred thousand Kiwis sometimes drive stoned, causing at least 80 deaths a year (half being homicides that target innocent victims) year in and year out. Despite the myths an Auckland study by Dr Blows found habitual cannabis users were 9.5 times more likely to be involved in crashes than other drivers, with 5.6% of people who crashed having used.

Cannabis fans in the public safety threat age group aren't showing personal responsibility, youths are killing themselves and innocent parties at world leading rates - despite NZTA running a low budget tv ad campaign in distant memory and spending a couple of thousand dollars on it's current "you tube drug driving adverts" that have had 200 odd hits.

Users of this drug have not earned the freedom to imbibe the way drinkers have as drinkers by and large respect road safety laws. Only 31 New Zealanders died drunk driving in the year ending July 2007 – contrast this with the fact 40% of dead drivers under 25 years of age have cannabis in their blood. Dead Teens are 2-3x more likely to have had cannabis as a factor than alcohol, and a Christchurch Medical School in 2008 found its use is also a bigger risk than alcohol for non lethal youth crashes.

New Zealand Police were funded to perform 600-1000 roadside drug tests yearly after the incompetent law change of 2009, but are performing just 300; an average of 6 tests weekly versus 53,000 alcohol tests a week. Meanwhile, in 2005/6 activities targeting cannabis comprised 38% of Police budgets, 333,684 police hours were misspent with no impact on the pot purchasing time (20 mins), nor on the drug road toll.

In Australian States and much of Europe driver drug tests are in the tens of thousands yearly as budgets are directed to where the harm is. However Transport Minister Steven Joyce repeatedly asserts that he is not interested in progressing Public Safety with a modernised drug driving approach. Instead he fends off Officials who angle to endanger the Public with an alcohol limit drop, to ticket social drinkers in the speeding fine tradition. Driver fatality numbers with alcohol in Victoria doubled for people over 21 under that change, as breath checks rose six-fold and offences shot up from 14,000 criminal offences to 45,000+ “drunk tax” tickets.

Limit drops are only turned from a bad thing into a good thing when drug driving is also properly addressed, due to policy synergies. Based on local epidemiology and foreign experience the following policy change impacts may be expected – a 0.05 alcohol limit will enrich Treasury but at a cost of between 16 extra lives lost and 4 saved. A Random Drug Testing regime would save 16 lives saved from the cannabis toll plus 8 from the mixed cannabis/alcohol toll, and both policies enacted together would save 30-45 lives a year.

The Law Commission got it wrong in recommending as limit drop without random drug testing, but even worse was the Law Commissions Misuse of Drugs Review Report saying that; “There is certainly reason to believe that appropriately regulating these substances may be more effective at minimising drug-related harm than prohibiting them altogether and there is the opportunity to test this in a closely monitored and controlled environment”.

This opinion is deceptively reassuring when it comes to the main drug risk of driving i.e. cannabis, given that the Police and ESR deceased-driver bloods study, which would have allowed the first such policy impact evaluation on road safety, has now ended. Also NZ does not follow European Road Safety Observatory and UN recommendations to test drivers involved in injury and fatal crashes for the main impairing drug classes implicated in the road toll.

Data on hospital admissions from road crashes do not even capture drug-related presentations to emergency departments, and in the absence of random roadside drug testing NZ obviously can not mitigate the known added risk from having the slightly increased consumption of cannabis by male youth, which is evidenced to occur when prohibition law is relaxed. Poor statistical tracking mechanisms in the drug policy area mean that NZ simply cannot monitor the environment.

Candor Trusts recent review of the impact on road safety of cannabis laws globally found tolerant prohibition plus Random Drug Testing to be most effective for protecting road safety, followed by decriminalization plus RDT. The status quo of prohibition plus no RDT and drug driving risk education is the worst possible formula for youth. Brash is recommending a situation that would undoubtedly cost a handful more lives on the road without Random Drug Testing in situ. Would he still consider cannabis use to be victimless if one of those victims were his child?

Candor Trust believes he owes an apology to road crime victims for denying our existence, as we are not insignificant details in his money saving master plan. That is upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, which decreed that part of the right to life (also enshrined in our Bill of Rights) is an obligation that Governments carry to place “effective criminal law provisions to deter the commission of offences against the person, backed up by law enforcement machinary”. Acts decriminalising club must tell voters how they can support cannabis law reform, given that our road safety laws simply aren't up to the challenge yet.

ENDS

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