Catching drug impaired drivers

It’s common knowledge that driving while impaired is a bad idea.
When it comes to impairment by alcohol, it is almost as commonly known that impairment is measured by the amount of alcohol in 100ml of blood with the limit set in Alberta of 50 milligrams or 0.05 per cent.
With cannabis, freshly made legal in October, driving impaired is illegal but there isn’t a simple breathalyzer test for it.
Determining whether someone is impaired by a drug is where Drug Recognition Experts (DRE), such as Chestermere RCMP’s Const. Jeff Kalan who is an Evaluating Officer, come in.
“What we’re doing is we’re looking at, is somebody impaired,” said Kalan.
“That can range from slightly impaired to greatly impaired,” he said, “but any degree of impairment while driving is what the Drug Recognition Expert looks for.”
With a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that the science behind the DRE designation is accurate and admissible in court, it’s no wonder that the course to earn the designation is one of the hardest Kalan has taken as an RCMP officer.
“We actually do a three-week course on recognizing signs and symptoms of drugs and how it impairs the body,” he said.
Once certified, a DRE determines not only if a person is impaired but what they are impaired by applying a number of tests to a suspect.
“There’s seven categories of drugs and based on different symptomologies that you’re showing me I can determine which one you are impaired by, including cannabis,” said Kalan.
If a person is pulled over and the police suspects impairment, Kalan said that the first step will often be a standardized field sobriety test.
“Those are the ones that you see on the TV,” said Kalan.
“Kind of touch your nose and can you walk a straight line and that kind of stuff is basically what we do,” he said, “It’s not quite that kind of simplicity.”
Given the distinctive smell of cannabis, it is often very obvious when a standardized field sobriety test is needed.
“If we smell fresh marijuana, if we smell burnt marijuana we can put you through these battery of tests because there is a reasonable suspicion that you have consumed cannabis recently,” said Kalan.
A failed sobriety test can lead to an arrest where the suspect will be brought back to the detachment and Kalan, as the local DRE will be called in to perform the DRE tests on the suspect.
“The last one I did was just under an hour,” said Kalan.
The extensive tests can be done in about 45 by a very experienced DRE with an hour being more of the average time.
“It takes you through everything including walk and turn tests,” said Kalan.
The test starts with divided attention assessments.
“We’re basically trying to make you do one thing and think of something else and see how your mind is reacting to that,” he said.
The goal is to ask a suspected impaired person to perform tasks that can be done easily by someone who is sober.
“I’ve seen some pretty veteran pot smokers attempt these divided attention tests and perform very poorly,” said Kalan.
From there, several physiological tests are done.
“We take your pulse we’ll take, we take a look at your eyes, we take a look at your blood pressure, temperature of your body,” said Kalan, “things that you actually can’t manipulate.”
Once the tests are complete, Kalan or another DRE, can look at the total results and make a determination of a person’s level of impairment.
“I can the, using a number of these parts of your body that you can’t fake, I can then determine what your impaired by,” he said.
“From there we actually demand a urine sample and have it confirmed by the laboratory,” said Kalan.
As Chestermere’s DRE, Kalan is on the front line working to keep Chestermere’s roads safe from impaired drivers.
Since legalization of Cannabis, Kalan said he hasn’t noticed a big increase in cannabis impaired drivers.
Having said that, Kalan reminds those who do try cannabis that the consequences and dangers of driving impaired are the same for cannabis as they are alcohol.
“It is the same charge under the criminal code for driving impaired by alcohol as it is for driving impaired by any drug, be it cannabis or any other of the drugs that are available,” he said.