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Roadside Drug Testing (ACT)

hoptis

Bluelight Crew
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May 1, 2002
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ACT Govt planning to introduce roadside drug testing
Posted Thu May 1, 2008 3:50pm AEST
ABC News

The ACT Government has released a discussion paper and is seeking suggestions from Canberrans on how roadside drug testing can be introduced.

Testing regimes have already been introduced in other jurisdictions.

Transport Minister John Hargreaves says police will only test for three drugs but the methods will be more invasive than breath-testing.

"We're talking about cannabis, ecstasy and ice and we're talking about regimes about taking blood, saliva samples and urine samples," he said.

Mr Hargreaves says the Government wants to focus on road safety and avoid eroding human rights in the process.

"We want the community to tell us how they feel about the natural conflict between roadside drug testing as a road safety initiative as opposed to an anti drug use initiative," he said.

"There is a conflict between the invasion of civil liberties against the need for road safety, now this is a road safety initiative."

He says one of the ways to balance the two is to only charge people who test positive, with traffic offences.

"The penalties will not apply to this regime the same as they do for using drugs," he said.

"If people are picked up at a roadside and they are charged, it will only apply to it as being a driving offence, a road traffic offence, but we need the people in Canberra to be comfortable with that."

The ACT Opposition says the Government is neglecting road safety by seeking to preserve civil liberties.

Opposition transport spokesman, Steve Pratt, says it is more important to look after the safety of the motorists who do not use drugs.

"Lets not forget the human rights of the 95 per cent of Canberrans who do not drive drug affected," he said.

"Their human right to not be put at risk by the very few people, but unfortunately a growing number, who do drive recklessly drug affected."

ABC Online
 
ACT to get roadside random drug testing

Opposition push for roadside drug tests

Posted Mon Dec 7, 2009 9:15am AEDT
Updated 11 hours 36 minutes ago

r192911_728839.jpg


The ACT Opposition will introduce a bill in the Legislation Assembly this week to give police the power to conduct roadside drug tests.

The testing involves taking oral swabs to screen for cannabis, ecstasy and amphetamine use.

Opposition Leader Zed Seselja says the ACT is the only jurisdiction in Australia without random drug testing laws.

"This is something that has been used now for some time in other jurisdictions. Every other jurisdiction has this in some form," he said.

"It's something that is now well and truly tested but it's something that I think we shouldn't be delaying on any more - we've seen the government really dragging their feet on this."

Attorney General Simon Corbell says the government has already been examining the option.

"Whether it would be the first priority compared to some other things we would need to do to reduce the road toll is something that we would have to make a judgement about," he said.

"I think on balance there's probably a range of other measures that we could put in place first to help reduce the road toll."

Mr Seselja says that is not good enough.

The ACT Greens have responded warily to the Liberals bill.

Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury says his party needs to see the fine print in the legislation before deciding whether they will support it or not.

"There are difficulties and technicalities around dealing with this sort of legislation - what will the threshold be, what's the standard at which a driver might be penalised, does this cover only illegal drugs or does it cover legal drugs as well so?" he said.

"I think there are a lot of very detailed questions here that need to be worked through."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/07/2763617.htm
 
"We're talking about cannabis, ecstasy and ice and we're talking about regimes about taking blood, saliva samples and urine samples," he said.

Yeah, right. I don't think even the government is retarded enough think they can start jabbing needles into the arm of motorists on their way to work.
 
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