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Victoria is expected to amend the Immediate Roadside Prohibition scheme to include drug impairment or to create a similar anti-drug-driving program as the country legalizes marijuana next year.

A broader IRP regime would prevent drug-impaired-driving charges from clogging the courts and continue the made-in-B.C. approach of treating some offences as “regulatory” rather than “criminal.”

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Such a move would forestall motorists from launching the kind of constitutional challenges predicted in the wake of proposed federal anti-drugged-driving amendments to the Criminal Code with their questionable tests for impairment.

“Drug impaireds will be almost impossible to successfully prosecute, so they want to go that way (via the IRP route),” Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko said.

“If they start charging people (with drug-impaired driving) they will waste court time, exacerbate delays in other matters and never get a conviction. The proposed laws can’t survive a Charter challenge. I have been told by reliable sources that they were working on a scheme that resembles the IRP scheme. There will be an IRP scheme for drugs.”