With legalization of recreational marijuana approximately a month away, on October 17th, Codiac RCMP is ready for any increase in impaired drivers.
Superintendent Tom Critchlow says while Health Canada approved a roadside drug testing device, the Drager Drug Test 5000, he doesn’t have a timeline for a roll out of the devices here.
“We will work withour management team at Headquarters, along with the national police force, because as I believe there’s only so many going to be available across the country,” says Critchlow. “And we have to work with our partners at Public Safety for the province and decide what they will be authorizing.”
Critchlow says they already have five officers trained as Drug Recognition Experts, and the plan is to have one officer available per shift.
“Our goal is to have that capacity to respond to that type of call during the shift that we would have somebody that has that training,” says Critchlow. “But the fallback is that we can get somebody in pretty quickly who has that training.”
He adds they will be training more officers in the coming months as Drug Recognition Experts, in addition to their training to use the Standardized Field Sobriety Test to determine if drivers are impaired.
