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A 36-YEAR-OLD Waterford man has been charged with driving under the influence of drugs after being stopped at a checkpoint by gardaí on the Old Tramore Road this morning.

Conor Casey, a full-time delivery driver, could be facing a ban from driving, despite the fact that he smoked the substance in 1996 down the back lane during a transition year lunch break.

“I knew I should have never bowed down to peer pressure like that,” Casey later told WWN after being released from Garda custody, now also facing redundancy from his driving job, “it’s my own fault and I should have known better than to be driving with cannabis in my bloodstream. I haven’t been stoned in 21 years, but the law is the law, and its nobody’s fault, but mine”.

The stoner has become the first motorist in the country to be caught under the new drug testing regime for drivers, which tests for serious drugs like cocaine, opiates and cannabis for some reason – a new law launched today by the Gardaí and the Road Safety Authority.

“The new test has already stopped one maniac from killing dozens of people this morning,” Minister for Transport Shane Ross was all too eager to point out, “we expect to catch many more dope drivers over the coming months, and save millions of lives across the country in the process”.

“Cannabis is the most common drug detected on Irish roads, and obviously that’s a bad thing, because driving on cannabis is bad, because we said so, without doing any research into its effects on human drivers. Sure, you may not be stoned at the time of driving, but that’s not our fault if you smoked it in the past”.

It is unclear yet whether stimulants like caffeine, codeine, tobacco, cough syrups or various types of solvents, including glues and aerosols, will be also tested under the new law, and if indeed gardaí are capable of counting the correct number of tests without inflating them, but one thing is for certain; those who are caught could face disqualification from driving for a minimum of four years.

Meanwhile, the RSA has reported a 67% drop in Ireland’s traffic since the new law was introduced this morning.