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The Ottawa police have been training what’s called “drug recognition experts” since before the Criminal Code made the testing a compulsory component of drug-impaired driving cases. There are about 25 experts force-wide.

In 2012, it was the first major police service to demand that every new officer be trained to administer a standard field sobriety test. Nearly 40 per cent of front-line cops are trained in roadside screening.

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

Right now, marijuana only forms about 20 per cent of Ottawa police impaired driving investigations, but in those cases there are usually other forms of impairment, too. Straightforward cannabis-impaired investigations are “few and far between,” Kiss said, but the force fully expects those cases to go up come Oct. 17.

“It only follows to reason,” Kiss said.

Of course there will be cannabis users who have long smoked illegally who might have some understanding of how their body will function on marijuana. But the expectation is that there will also be the uninitiated suburban mom and dad who decide to get high maybe for the first time because it will be legal, who then also decide to drive while high for the first time. Police can’t stress enough that, in either case, just stay off the roads.

“Here’s the big danger with cannabis,” Kiss said. “It affects different people in different ways. There’s different concentrations, how fast you take it in, your own metabolism (how long you’ve been smoking and your own individual tolerance as a result) — you can be both physically impaired by cannabis and psychologically impaired.”