EDMONTON—Nearly a third of the funding police are getting to prepare for marijuana legalization will go toward a device not yet approved by the government.

City council approved $1.4 million last month for EPS to deal with one-time and ongoing cannabis legalization costs in 2018.

At a police commission meeting Thursday, where police revealed more details about where that money will be spent, Supt. Al Murphy said $300,000 is earmarked for devices designed to detect the presence of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in a motorist’s saliva.

The federal government has not yet approved any such devices for roadside use and has not indicated when that might happen.

Murphy said the funding is an “unfortunate necessity,” as police need to be prepared when it happens.

“It’s a high cost, but it’s necessary if you want a test that’s specific enough to differentiate between different drugs,” he said.

Murphy said police are estimating on the high end, assuming each test will run $75 to $100 and that police will conduct 4,000 tests a year.

Another significant portion of the $1.4 million will go toward training for drug recognition experts and field sobriety tests.

Murphy said no police agency is “anywhere near” meeting new federal training guidelines but new funding from the city will allow EPS to get there by the 2022 deadline.

The federal government is requiring each police department across the country to have six trained drug recognition experts per 100,000 population. Training is three weeks long and requires one trainer for every two candidates, Murphy said.

Police departments are also required to have one third of all front line officers trained to conduct sobriety tests by 2022.

Murphy said the work is already underway, and the funding approved by council will allow EPS to do “the immediate training we need.”

“It’s very resource heavy; it takes some time,” he said. “We can certainly get there with the resources we’ve asked for and the level of training we’ve ramped up to.”

Once legalization takes effect, motorists suspected of being on drugs will undergo blood tests to confirm the presence of a certain drug, rather than the urine tests currently used.

Funds will also be used to formalize the EPS Clandestine Laboratory Team, which will be trained to deal with potentially hazardous situations arising from people attempting to extract oils from cannabis plants using butane and other chemicals.

Federal regulations will allow residents to grow four cannabis plants per home.

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“Upon legalization, there is the potential that there are those that will attempt to extract oils from cannabis plants, and that is a chemical process that can be quite dangerous,” Murphy said. “Our police officers will be going into homes that they’re called to and they won’t know when these things exist. So those things present a lot of hazards for our officers.”

Murphy said EPS will ask the city for additional cannabis-related funds this fall, to sustain them through 2021, but did not say how much they will ask for.

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