Radio NZ item detrimental say victims

Campaign Against Drugs on Roads

Drug driving victim's group Candor asserts that listeners to a recent Radio NZ program were lulled into a false sense of security about drug driving by a visiting academic. Spokeswoman Rachael Ford says “Prof Kleiman's take being of 1990's vintage diverts us from effective action by wrongfully minimising the impact of cannabis on our toll whilst failing to even traverse the tried and true solutions”.

By his woolly thinking cannabis is not so risky as alcohol, only in combination becoming an issue, he concludes that we need only prosecute pot drivers if they have so much as a drop of liquor and then bang a drink drive charge on them, then get them to live sober. For a Prof of public policy he fails on crash epidemiology and on evidence based initiatives. The problem has long been failure to finger the issue, most dead drug drivers had a string of careless driving not drink driving convictions in NZ (Bailey, ESR), because drink is not their poison.

The alcohol derived risk component is addressed by current laws except for the loophole of low level drink drivers only getting slapped with instant fines when they use cannabis too and are at the risk of a blotto drunk. Critically the risk from cannabis is highest among youth whose alcohol limit is already zero alcohol limit, their crash risk on dope well exceeds adults on dope and 40% of our youth toll involves cannabis, while alcohol rarely features at all. Solid global and local studies all concur cannabis is a bigger crash contributor than alcohol for male youth today.

Carnage from sole cannabis use is extreme locally and when Victoria, Germany and others made pot driving an offence and implemented swab tests, not only were youth pot driving fatalities slashed, the kicker was that fatalities of adult drink drivers halved in Victoria and they dropped 10% overall in Germany. Because drivers quickly modified their risk behaviour to not drive drug impaired atop a low alcohol level. “You don't address an epidemic of drug driving by forbidding drink driving at harmless levels, that's like telling diabetics that sugar is ok but avoid even one atom of fat”.

Kleiman craftily suggested (rather than asserted) that we can't link a level of cannabis found in blood to a level of impairment or crash risk, but this is behind the times. Huestis et al at Swinburne University developed a method of blood testing that proves recency of use, oral fluid levels correlate well to blood levels, and much research published since 2006 has shown progressive impairment and crash risk as levels increase. At 2-3 ng there is a significant reduction in driving fitness, at 5ng driving skills test in simulators the same as if legally drunk, and so the UK is now joining others in setting blood limits.

Kleiman appealed to the myth of slow non aggressive cannabis driving when research says it ups risk-taking and doesn't significantly slow drivers - his proposed solution of ignoring sole cannabis impairment and of treating any level of alcohol use atop cannabis as drink driving crazily sanctions ongoing risky cannabis driving. “I almost expected him to try and ingratiate with the rebel teen audience who deflect risk info by cracking some joke about eating pizza at the wheel being the real dope driving test. It is a heartbreak that this nuisance breezes in and invents a new wheel that won't roll as effective law, hiding the fact many countries long past employed proper solutions to drug driving tolls" said Ford.

His oddball policy dream fails Konrad Truger age 4 whose mother was at sole cannabis 4ng and reckless driving and alcohol free, Greg Wolege whose alcohol free killer Iain Crisp was over 7ng of blood cannabis and the other 100 past and future primary pot driving victims per annum. Prof Kleimans alcohol prohibition bent and his casting of cannabis driving in an unrealistically positive light, seems to betray that his allegiances are to other causes than pure road safety.

It's unfortunate that many luminaries of traffic safety who are needed to counterbalance airy fairy drug policy experts whose focus is on drug decriminalising (this oft seems to entail calming concerns about harm with gob-smacking disinfo ) are absent from the drug driving symposium that Kleiman came for. It's simple to save lives; decriminalise, set a cannabis limit, random roadside test., and 1000 lives have been unnecessarily lost in the ten years that we have advocated these infallible solutions.

But between the Kleimans and the Keys they''ll never happen, and drug driving victims will keep on dropping like flies while the officially protected drug drivers crack jokes and act all resentful at victims who dare seek more accountability than the 200 hours community service one Mr Crisp lately got for unprosecuted drug drive killing. For the Government has decided action will ruffle everyone's feathers.

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