Sgt. Rod Pastoor. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge Police: Cannabis legalization hasn’t had a huge impact on impaired driving

Oct 17, 2019 | 12:12 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – As of October 17th, 2019, it was exactly one year ago that non-medical cannabis became legalized in Canada.

Sgt. Rod Pastoor with Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) says, when legalization was first being discussed, police forces across the country had no idea what they should brace for and were preparing for the worst.

Now that a full year has passed, he reports that they have not been too-greatly impacted by the change.

“I wouldn’t say we’re strained. We were proactive, we had a lot of training put into place prior to this happening and ongoing training. We’re certainly ready for whatever we face, whether it be alcohol or drug-impaired driving.”

He told media that the number of drug-impaired driving cases has gone up over the last year, but notes that this includes all illegal substances and not just cannabis.

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Over the last year, police conducted 14 investigations into impairment by drugs. Information on how this compares to the same period last year was not available.

According to Pastoor, police are still dealing with far more cases of alcohol-impaired driving than for drugs, but he did not have exact statistics on that either.

“In the last three years, our statistics for alcohol-impaireds have gone down. Drug impaireds have gone up, but along with that has been an increase in training and awareness for it. Has it spiked? I don’t know. Do we have more in our system because we’ve had intervention with them? Yes.”

Right now, LPS relies solely on field sobriety tests to determine if a driver is under the influence of drugs. The Drager DrugTest 5000 is the only saliva testing device that has been approved by the federal government, but Pastoor says more research needs to be done before they could potentially get them for their force.

Pastoor did not have any information on whether there is much of a black market in the Lethbridge area for cannabis or how that has changed over the last year, nor for public intoxication.