Drug-driving sentencing v Drink-driving?

[oceanview]

I have noticed recently from seeing local and not so local newsfeeds that people convicted of drug driving seem to only get a 12 month ban- no matter how many times over the limit for that drug they were ( one person was 6 times the cocaine limit!).

Drink driving bans seem to be determined by how far over the limit somebody was- and if you refuse to provide or you give a sample more than 2.5 times the limit ,you're also classed as a "High risk offender" and have to go through a medical before getting a licence back.

How come these guidelines don't seem to apply to drug-driving- particularly the medical bit?

[cptsideways]

Round our way Dorset (pre crimbo) its 16:1 drug driving to drink driving! Which is pretty shocking.

Though this is only a recent phenomenon, I thinks the courts are only just catching up with the trend that has been occurring due to new roadside detection.

I'm sure insurance co's will see matters differently anyone with an insight into the subject?

[agtlaw]

If the offence charged is contrary to section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 then the minimum disqualification period is 12 months. The minimum disqualification period is increased to 3 years if the offender has been convicted of a relevant offence within 10 years. The minimum disqualification period is increased to 2 years if the offender has 2 or more 56+ day disqualifications in the preceding 3 years.

The court's guideline document refers to factors increasing seriousness. There's an exhaustive list:

• Evidence of another specified drug or alcohol in the body
• Evidence of an unacceptable standard of driving
• Driving an HGV, LGV or PSV.
• Driving a vehicle for hire or reward

If none of the aforementioned factors are present then the court should consider a disqualification period of 12-22 months.

If one or more of the aforementioned factors are present then the court should consider a disqualification period of 23-28 months.

If one or more of the aforementioned factors are present and one or more aggravating factors are present then the court should consider a disqualification period of 29-36 months. A non-exhaustive list of aggravating factors is published in the guideline document:

• Previous convictions (having regard to the nature of the offence, relevance and time elapsed)
• Location (e.g. near a school)
• Passengers
• High level of traffic or pedestrians
• Poor road or weather conditions

[Blue Oval84]

oceanview said:

How come these guidelines don't seem to apply to drug-driving- particularly the medical bit?

I'd hazard a guess that it's because the limits for drug driving are absolutely minuscule, and in the case of cocaine in particular they aren't testing for coke, they test for the metabolite left behind after your body has processed it all.

It's perfectly possible to do coke, then fail a drug wipe two or more days later when completely and utterly sober. The person who was 6 times over the limit may very well have not done any for a day, and could quite feasibly have been completely sober and unaffected.

I've certainly heard it said that the drug driving laws were partially brought in as a way of enforcing the prohibition (i.e. get people to think they'd better not have a few lines of coke tonight because they could still fail a test the day after)

At least with the drink driving limit, they aren't testing to see whether you were drunk yesterday, they're testing to see if you're drunk NOW. If someone gets in a car whilst twice, or three times of the drink drive limit I'd imagine they bloody well know it and deserve to have a harsher sentence. I'm not so sure that's the case with drug driving.

[anonymous-user]

Blue Oval84 said:

I'd hazard a guess that it's because the limits for drug driving are absolutely minuscule, and in the case of cocaine in particular they aren't testing for coke, they test for the metabolite left behind after your body has processed it all.

It's perfectly possible to do coke, then fail a drug wipe two or more days later when completely and utterly sober. The person who was 6 times over the limit may very well have not done any for a day, and could quite feasibly have been completely sober and unaffected.

I've certainly heard it said that the drug driving laws were partially brought in as a way of enforcing the prohibition (i.e. get people to think they'd better not have a few lines of coke tonight because they could still fail a test the day after)

At least with the drink driving limit, they aren't testing to see whether you were drunk yesterday, they're testing to see if you're drunk NOW. If someone gets in a car whilst twice, or three times of the drink drive limit I'd imagine they bloody well know it and deserve to have a harsher sentence. I'm not so sure that's the case with drug driving.

Absolutely, and its the same with weed. Totally unaffected the next day but it still leaves traces . 16:1 doesn't surprise me at all. Get pissed, get caught driving, get banned. Quite premeditated. Get stoned / E'd/ do some coke, next day get tested driving "straight". Get banned. It's quite terrifying really. If you, say, enjoy a smoke occasionally, you are at risk of being banned for I don't know how many days after. Someone did ask on here how long, but of course got totally shot down by the moral police. I'm assuming more than 24 hours.

[Graveworm]

Blue Oval84 said:

I'd hazard a guess that it's because the limits for drug driving are absolutely minuscule, and in the case of cocaine in particular they aren't testing for coke, they test for the metabolite left behind after your body has processed it all.

It's perfectly possible to do coke, then fail a drug wipe two or more days later when completely and utterly sober. The person who was 6 times over the limit may very well have not done any for a day, and could quite feasibly have been completely sober and unaffected.

I've certainly heard it said that the drug driving laws were partially brought in as a way of enforcing the prohibition (i.e. get people to think they'd better not have a few lines of coke tonight because they could still fail a test the day after)

At least with the drink driving limit, they aren't testing to see whether you were drunk yesterday, they're testing to see if you're drunk NOW. If someone gets in a car whilst twice, or three times of the drink drive limit I'd imagine they bloody well know it and deserve to have a harsher sentence. I'm not so sure that's the case with drug driving.

The test for cocaine tests for cocaine OR the metabolite the latter at 10 times higher concentration than the former. It was set low, one of the rationales was that, it was illegal to take cocaine in the first place, which is not the same for drink so the test just had to eliminate the levels left by accidental exposure. The levels are higher than it's possible to be sacked for, following a workplace test. You only usually get tested, if the officer suspects that you have been taking drugs, so pretty much it is when there are signs of the effect rather than the hypothetical days after taking X. It does occasionally happen, in some cases, after an accident or very rarely a moving traffic offence.

[Graveworm]

RogerDodger said:

Absolutely, and its the same with weed. Totally unaffected the next day but it still leaves traces . 16:1 doesn't surprise me at all. Get pissed, get caught driving, get banned. Quite premeditated. Get stoned / E'd/ do some coke, next day get tested driving "straight". Get banned. It's quite terrifying really. If you, say, enjoy a smoke occasionally, you are at risk of being banned for I don't know how many days after. Someone did ask on here how long, but of course got totally shot down by the moral police. I'm assuming more than 24 hours.

According to the "Experts", even those pro legalisation and drug use, the benzoylecgonine does still impair driving for 24 hours after cocaine use so next day it is difficult to know if they are driving "straight". That said it is possible to be over the limit further down the road than that whilst unaffected.

Edited by Graveworm on Sunday 30th December 21:30

[Blue Oval84]

Graveworm said:

According to the "Experts", even those pro legalisation and drug use, the benzoylecgonine does still impair driving for 24 hours after cocaine use so next day it is difficult to know if they are driving "straight". That said it is possible to be over the limit further down the road than that whilst unaffected.

Edited by Graveworm on Sunday 30th December 21:30

I was under the impression that the experts suggested significantly higher limits than the government eventually chose, I'm not sure there was any evidence at all to suggest that driving is impaired at the current levels.

[Graveworm]

Blue Oval84 said:

I was under the impression that the experts suggested significantly higher limits than the government eventually chose, I'm not sure there was any evidence at all to suggest that driving is impaired at the current levels.

No none at all.

[Aretnap]

Blue Oval84 said:

I was under the impression that the experts suggested significantly higher limits than the government eventually chose, I'm not sure there was any evidence at all to suggest that driving is impaired at the current levels.

The government did consult on a couple of options: a "risk based approach" where the limits would be set at levels which actually cause impairment, and a "zero tolerance" approach where they would be set just high enough to rule out inadvertent exposure (ie any level higher than you'd get from being in a room where someone was smoking a spliff, or handling banknotes that someone had used to snort coke, or whatever). They went for the latter option - saying that they didn't want to "send the message" that it was OK to take some drugs and drive. The consultation documents here go into it a bit

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/drug-d...

I'm not a big fan of the approach that the government chose (but then, I'm skeptical about drug prohibition in general) but I can see that politically speaking it made sense. Going for limits which effectively made it OK to drive having taken some illegal drugs would have led to predictable outrage from the tabloid press, the road safety lobby and the anti-drug lobby. There isn't really an equivalent well organised and influential lobby group to be outraged on behalf of recreational drug users.

But yes, it does mean that for some drugs it's perfectly possible to be quite significantly over the limit without being noticeably impaired, which in turn means that being several times the limit isn't necessarily a factor that makes the offence more serious than being slightly over the limit... unlike alcohol where the difference between being slightly over the limit and 2.5 times the limit is the difference between being somewhat impaired and being totally incapable. And it also means that those local newspaper headlines that go "Drug driver was SIX TIMES the legal limit for X" need to be read with a pinch of salt.

[QBee]

I am part of the silent portion of the public who these days sees driving in any way impaired as an unreasonable risk to other road and pavement users.
I value my life and want to keep it please, so ask others on the road to see impaired driving in a similar way, rather than a case of how much can we get away with?

[stitched]

QBee said:

I am part of the silent portion of the public who these days sees driving in any way impaired as an unreasonable risk to other road and pavement users.
I value my life and want to keep it please, so ask others on the road to see impaired driving in a similar way, rather than a case of how much can we get away with?

Couldn't agree more, however if a regular cannabis smoker stops for a week or so before driving then he would probably fail the test whilst being completely unaffected.
Granted cannabis use is not legal but seems a bit off to take away someones licence when they were not under the influence of drugs.

[Hol]

stitched said:

QBee said:

I am part of the silent portion of the public who these days sees driving in any way impaired as an unreasonable risk to other road and pavement users.
I value my life and want to keep it please, so ask others on the road to see impaired driving in a similar way, rather than a case of how much can we get away with?

Couldn't agree more, however if a regular cannabis smoker stops for a week or so before driving then he would probably fail the test whilst being completely unaffected.
Granted cannabis use is not legal but seems a bit off to take away someones licence when they were not under the influence of drugs.

Probably, would suggest a possibility greater than 50%, for a conviction.
Is someone really that likely to fail a test after week or more off?

[Graveworm]

stitched said:

Couldn't agree more, however if a regular cannabis smoker stops for a week or so before driving then he would probably fail the test whilst being completely unaffected.
Granted cannabis use is not legal but seems a bit off to take away someones licence when they were not under the influence of drugs.

Our levels are the same as Canada where it is legal. They also have a lower level when combined with Alcohol. All the studies show that regular Cannabis users, who do drive, frequently drive too soon after use. As above it's not a random test so, if there are no signs of impairment, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone will be tested in the first place. Studies show that impairment is at 5 ?g/mL and that above 1 ?g/mL (Half the UK limit) there is an increased likelihood of having a fault accident.
]

Edited by Graveworm on Monday 31st December 09:27

[anonymous-user]

That's interesting. So the police test for booze after any incident, but drugs only if you seem impaired?

My Mrs crashed and they tested for booze (absolutely no sign of impairment ), but not for drugs (same, no signs).

That's encouraging for the inoccent. But then makes the 16:1 a bit shocking.

[Flumpo]

RogerDodger said:

That's interesting. So the police test for booze after any incident, but drugs only if you seem impaired?

My Mrs crashed and they tested for booze (absolutely no sign of impairment ), but not for drugs (same, no signs).

That's encouraging for the inoccent. But then makes the 16:1 a bit shocking.

That’s anecdotal not factual. The police CAN test for alcohol at the scene of an incident but DONT always do it and the same for drugs.

[Graveworm]

Flumpo said:

That’s anecdotal not factual. The police CAN test for alcohol at the scene of an incident but DONT always do it and the same for drugs.

It's policy that they should test for Alcohol following an accident. Testing for drugs is still based on an assessment.

What is not anecdotal is that:

• Comfortably over 50% fail (10% for alcohol),
• The numbers of tests is insignificant compared to the number of accidents or moving traffic offences dealt with by police.
• The failure rate for cannabis detections compared to cocaine is much lower than it's relative prevalence should indicate.

[Flumpo]

Graveworm said:

Flumpo said:

That’s anecdotal not factual. The police CAN test for alcohol at the scene of an incident but DONT always do it and the same for drugs.

It's policy that they should test for Alcohol following an accident. Testing for drugs is still based on an assessment.

What is not anecdotal is that:

• Comfortably over 50% fail (10% for alcohol),
• The numbers of tests is insignificant compared to the number of accidents or moving traffic offences dealt with by police.
• The failure rate for cannabis detections compared to cocaine is much lower than it's relative prevalence should indicate.

So exactly as I said then, as the police ‘should’ test but nothing says they must and they don’t always do it.

[Graveworm]

Flumpo said:

So exactly as I said then, as the police ‘should’ test but nothing says they must and they don’t always do it.

In general if they don't test for alcohol then someone, often several someones will ask why they didn't.

[Flumpo]

Graveworm said:

Flumpo said:

So exactly as I said then, as the police ‘should’ test but nothing says they must and they don’t always do it.

In general if they don't test for alcohol then someone, often several someones will ask why they didn't.

Ok, I’m not here to argue with people. All I’m saying is they DONT always test everyone with the breathalyser at the scene of all traffic incidents.

That’s my experience based on x 3 accidents I know people have had in the last 18 months. They could be in the .01 percent that weren’t tested compared to the 99 percent when they did.

I’m imagine the attending officer makes a decsision when they get there based on the circumstances. That’s all I’m saying, which seems to be what you are saying all be it in unnecessary way to have an argument.

I can see you are arguing with people in a number of these threads so I will drop out now as I’ve got no interest in it.