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Police chief says officers still don't have training, equipment needed to detect drugged drivers

With marijuana legalization just months away, anxiety and frustration growing, Pedersen says
marijuana-plant
With the legalization of marijuana getting closer by the day in Canada, Greater Sudbury Police Chief Paul Pedersen says there's been little progress in getting police the training and equipment they need to enforce drugged driving laws. (File)

With the legalization of marijuana getting closer by the day in Canada, Greater Sudbury Police Chief Paul Pedersen says there's been little progress in getting police the training and equipment they need to enforce drugged driving laws.

Speaking at the Sudbury police services board meeting Thursday, Pedersen said they have been reassured that resources are forthcoming, but time is running short.

"We've heard about this legislation and we continue to hear a commitment from federal and provincial governments to give us both the tools and the training,” Pedersen said. “I'd like to be able to believe they are going to deliver on the promises, but each day, each week the clock ticks a little closer to what we hear is a July deadline and we're just a few weeks away from moving into February."

There is significant frustration and anxiety among police, he said, who will be expected to enforce the law, but have yet to find out the details of how that will work.

For example, blood tests are expected to be the way to determine if someone has THC – the ingredient in pot that produces the high users feel – in their system.

“The challenge becomes, how do you use the equipment -- whatever the equipment is -- and what's the system to verify the level of THC in the system?" Pedersen said. "To be able to read that level is going to be a blood analysis. Who's going to do that analysis? How is somebody going to do that? What is that time going to look like? Does that mean our officers are going to be sitting at HSN in line waiting for somebody to draw blood?

"These are the questions that have not been answered. When you hear me getting frustrated, it's frustration because there's anxiety when the answers aren't known."

There are 264 sworn officers who will have to receive the still unspecified training on the still unspecified equipment. That's a considerable time commitment when officers already have a number of annual training requirements during a calendar year, plus the day-to-day job of policing the community.

"For me as a chief of police, that's one of the challenges with training,” he said. “We don't have a part-time work force. When we take people away to train them, we're taking them away from front-line duties, which impacts our ability to deliver on the expectations of the communities we serve."

The force has a limited number of officers already trained to detected drugged driving, but the entire force needs to be trained when pot becomes legal this summer, but driving while stoned is still against the law.

"The expectation for all of this is July – not on July 1st, but sometime either before or after that,” he said. “We've got 264 sworn officers that are going to have to be trained before July. We've been given assurances ... and I want to trust that both federally and provincially they will put us in a place to succeed. But as I say, the clock keeps ticking. There are only so many hours between now and (July)."


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