drug testing canberra

ACT Govt planning to introduce roadside drug testing

http://www.abc.net.au:80/news/stories/2008/05/01/2232916.htm

The ACT Government has released a discussion paper and is seeking suggestions from Canberrans on how roadside drug testing can be introduced.

Testing regimes have already been introduced in other jurisdictions.

Transport Minister John Hargreaves says police will only test for three drugs but the methods will be more invasive than breath-testing.

"We're talking about cannabis, ecstasy and ice and we're talking about regimes about taking blood, saliva samples and urine samples," he said.

Mr Hargreaves says the Government wants to focus on road safety and avoid eroding human rights in the process.

"We want the community to tell us how they feel about the natural conflict between roadside drug testing as a road safety initiative as opposed to an anti drug use initiative," he said.

"There is a conflict between the invasion of civil liberties against the need for road safety, now this is a road safety initiative."

He says one of the ways to balance the two is to only charge people who test positive, with traffic offences.

"The penalties will not apply to this regime the same as they do for using drugs," he said.

"If people are picked up at a roadside and they are charged, it will only apply to it as being a driving offence, a road traffic offence, but we need the people in Canberra to be comfortable with that."

The ACT Opposition says the Government is neglecting road safety by seeking to preserve civil liberties.

Opposition transport spokesman, Steve Pratt, says it is more important to look after the safety of the motorists who do not use drugs.

"Lets not forget the human rights of the 95 per cent of Canberrans who do not drive drug affected," he said.

"Their human right to not be put at risk by the very few people, but unfortunately a growing number, who do drive recklessly drug affected."