VANCOUVER—Police across British Columbia will likely struggle to catch people too high to drive when marijuana legalization occurs later this year, due to the lack of detection technology and the limited number of officers trained to identify impaired drivers.

The only officers capable of nabbing drivers impaired by marijuana or other drugs are specially trained Drug Recognition Experts (DREs), police officers who act something like human breathalyzers for drugs. But there are just a handful of these officers in B.C.

There are more than 6,000 RCMP officers serving the provincial and municipal detachments across the province, and the B.C. RCMP has enough roadside alcohol breathalyzers to equip every single one of these officers.

For drugs, however, there are only 88 DRE officers to go around. That’s the equivalent of roughly 38,000 drivers in B.C. for every officer that can detect drugged driving. It also remains unclear when technological aids will become available for officers to use to detect drug impairment.

“All police forces across the country ... don’t have enough DREs, and it’s problematic,” said Andrew Murie, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada.

The Criminal Code requires police to conduct sobriety examinations within three hours of someone operating a vehicle, so it is imperative for police to get a qualified expert on scene rapidly to conduct an hour-long drug-impaired driving evaluation.

“The problem right now with the system is if somebody pulls over a drug-impaired driver, usually a DRE is not available,” said Murie. “So usually that person is let go, or given a 24-hour suspension.”

Such a suspension under B.C.’s Motor Vehicle Act only requires an officer to have reasonable suspicion that a driver is affected by a drug. By comparison, a Criminal Code investigation that requires a DRE could lead to much more serious punishment, including jail time and significant fines.

The issue is how many detachments lack sufficient numbers to ensure there is always a DRE officer on call at all times.

“We need a lot more than 88,” said Wayne Jeffery, a retired RCMP forensic toxicologist who introduced the DRE program to Canada in the 1990s. “Every police department throughout British Columbia, whether RCMP or municipal, need DREs. However, I look at it, if a police department has one breathalyzer they need one DRE.”

Police and government agencies across Canada realize just how limited their resources are. Already, there are plans to train an additional 150 DRE-certified officers per year across Canada over the next five years. In B.C., the Vancouver Police, Port Moody Police, West Vancouver Police, Abbotsford Police, Victoria Police, Delta Police and the RCMP all said they have ramped up DRE training for officers.

Victoria police chief Del Manak, president of the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, represents more than 40 individual police detachments in the province. He has been working to find solutions to police cannabis-impaired driving for nearly a year.

“There is no one answer to this,” Manak said. “Police agencies will be ready to conduct drug impaired driving investigations. Now, are we going to be at the optimum number of trained officers that we would like to have in our agencies? Maybe not.”

A major limitation is the amount of time and money it takes to train a single DRE-certified officer.

The group courses cost up to $40,000 at a time, though the federal RCMP will pick up the tab for that. The course is three weeks long, and individual departments are responsible for travel and salary costs during that time. It’s been estimated to cost each detachment up to $8,000 per DRE officer.

As of April 9, there were only 691 DRE-certified officers across all of Canada, according to a spokesperson for the RCMP’s national office.

And unfortunately for police, it’s not as simple as just training additional officers. The certification expires unless officers perform a minimum of four drug assessments over two years. At least one of those evaluations must be witnessed by a certified instructor.

These requirements mean many certifications expire over time, said Jeffery, who recalled how B.C. had nearly 150 certified officers when DRE legislation was implemented a decade ago. However, he explained, “because of promotions and transfers and everything else, the numbers dropped down.”

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The training itself qualifies officers to conduct a 12-step analysis to determine whether someone is impaired by drugs. The steps cover everything from examining someone’s pulse, eye behaviour, muscle tone examinations, searching for injection marks and even the analysis of bodily fluids.

“There’s no doubt. It’s a perishable skill,” Manak said. “It’s recognized that in order to be competent in conducting these tests, they have to keep a log, they have to track how many they’re doing, when was their last one? How many tests they completed were not successful? ... All of the stats have to be kept.”

And despite DRE officers being the only current means to identify whether a driver is too high to be behind the wheel, some question whether the evaluation is even accurate.

The opinions of judges are split. The latest case to tackle the issue involved the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017. In the R. v. Bingley case, the prevailing opinion upheld the expertise of DRE officers as “conclusively and irrebuttably” established by law, while dissenting judges questioned the reliability of the DRE process, going so far as to say that it’s open to judges to treat the process as “novel science.”

Driving defence lawyers such as Jennifer Teryn, a lawyer who practises on Vancouver Island, tend to agree with the latter opinion.

“How do you know they’re driving impaired?” Teryn said. “Officers should be very cautious before they put themselves in a position where they’re going to have to complete an investigation based on potentially questionable evidence.”

Meanwhile, both the federal and provincial governments maintain optimistic oral fluid screening tools will soon be made available to police. The piece of legislation that would permit that, Bill C-46, is still before the Senate.

“We are waiting on that, because that is going to shape a lot of the regulations around the kind of technology that they intend to use, and it’s something that we believe needs to be communicated to the provinces ASAP,” said Minister of Public Safety Mike Farnworth, who recently introduced legislation in B.C. to allow for 90-day licence suspensions for drugged driving.

The Ministry of Public Safety, in a statement, said in-lieu of oral-screening devices, the provincial legislation will also rely on Drug Recognition Experts.

To plug the gaps, police are now creating plans to share DRE officers across jurisdictions, a process that can be more challenging in rural areas of the province. Meanwhile, officers are holding their collective breath, hoping that the limited resources they have will be enough.

“I urge all British Columbians and Canadians to please ... do not drive impaired,” Manak said. “Take this seriously.”

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