The Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Act comes into force on March 11 and was meant to usher in random roadside drug testing yet the critical tool for that – oral fluid testing devices (OFTs) – are missing in action.

Queries to Assistant Commissioner Bruce O’Brien, who leads Road Policing, about whether a suitable OFT was ready to roll out, and what the plan was if not, were met with a brief response from Police media:

“Police has been undertaking an extensive programme of work to deliver on new provisions in the [Act]… This has included due diligence for the procurement of an oral fluid testing device… The procurement process has identified technological constraints with the available devices in meeting the requirements of the Act. Police is currently working with Te Manatū Waka (Ministry of Transport) and Waka Kotahi (NZ Transport Agency) to deliver on the requirements and intent of the legislation.”

It was hoped OFTs would give similar measures to alcohol breath testing, detecting recently taken “impairing” drugs. However, and despite warnings, the new law might have been so specific there’s nothing on the market able to meet its expectations.

An August 2022 briefing from Police to then-incoming police minister Chris Hipkins noted “challenges with implementing this legislation”, and, as the deadline looms, Police is not clarifying what exactly will change come March 11.

It seems, for those already stretched in policing the roads, dealing with the horrific aftermath of crashes and desperate to get recidivist drug-drivers off our roads, it will largely be status quo until the fluid testing devices turn up.

A “bonus”, if you will, is 15 new infringements and 98 criminal offences that will apply to blood test results and there are repeat and alcohol-plus-drug offences. But blood can only be taken following a crash or after a driver fails a time-intensive compulsory impairment test (CIT), which only “specially trained officers” can undertake.

Police won’t yet say if resources will be allocated to meet the time and skill demands to boost CIT numbers.

Enhancing drug-driver testing is a key action point in the Government’s Road to Zero strategy target of a 40 per cent reduction in road deaths and injury by 2040. However, 379 people died on the roads in 2022 – the most since 2009 (384). It appears some urgency is needed to get that trend line tracking the right way.

When introducing the drug-driving legislation nearly a year ago, Transport Minister Michael Wood said drug-impaired driving accounted for nearly a third of all road deaths. The Central District serious crash unit (SCU) believes it’s higher.

“Drugs are not so easily identified as a contributing factor until a toxicology report is received… in a large number of cases the [Traffic Crash Report] is not updated when the report is received usually some months later,” officer in charge of the unit, Detective Sergeant Grayson Joines, says.

“We are firmly of the belief that drug-impaired driving is statistically under-reported because of the human failure in updating the TCR when a toxicology report is later received.”

Often families of those killed by drug-drivers only hear drugs were a factor when an inquest is held. Some have been campaigning for random roadside drug testing for years and many coroners support it.

In 2018, a petition calling for urgent legislation to introduce testing was launched, led by the family of Matthew Dow, who was killed in 2017 by a driver high on methamphetamine and cannabis. It had more than 6000 signatures when it was presented in 2019 by Matthew’s mother Karen.

She was supported by the Porteous and Keene families, who lost three family members and a friend at Waverley in June 2018 at the hands of a drug-impaired driver. The driver and two children in his car also died. Post-mortem toxicology found THC and synthetic cannabis in the man’s system and witnesses told the coroner how drug-affected he seemed just before he and the six other people died.

The Central District SCU attended the horrific Waverley crash. Grayson says such crashes are “often etched in our minds for a very long time”.

“[Team members] have three-monthly mandatory wellness meetings with a psychiatrist... Part of my role is to protect these ‘Crashies’ from unwanted harm by limiting their exposure to crash scenes where possible.”

His team has dealt with 324 road smashes over the past five years, in which 229 people died. In these crashes where there are culpable deaths, the culpable party is often killed, and drugs play a major role, he says.

“[In the three years from 2020] on average, 32 per cent of drivers involved in fatal crashes had non-prescription drugs in their bodies at the time of the crash,” Grayson says.

His team firmly supports more police on the roads with more powers to deter bad behaviour, such as drug-driving.

“Every time a driver is stopped with excess breath/blood alcohol the job has been done and potentially a fatality averted. Our Impairment Prevention Teams are so under-rated. We will never know how many lives they have ‘saved’ through their presence.

“We can name 229 [families] who would give anything to have had a crash averted.”

Minister Wood said the new legislation “directly addresses” the preventable tragedies that stem from drug-driving through the introduction of OFTs.
No-one disputes why we need OFT devices – it’s the when and how that will save lives.