Information on Roadside Drug Testing

<strong>Drug driving detection rates double</strong>

DETECTION rates for drug driving have more than doubled in the past two years as the net tightens on motorists who drive under the influence of substances other than alcohol.

Almost 1,800 tests were carried out on motorists suspected of drug driving this year compared with 747 two years ago, and about three-quarters of them proved positive.

The pressure is to be intensified in 2009 with the testing authority, the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, assigning extra staff and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) planning its first drug-driving campaign.

Trials in Australia aimed at developing a reliable device for random roadside drug testing are also being followed closely by officials, with the intention of introducing any successful prototype here.

“They are piloting a saliva test and it’s being tracked very carefully,” said Noel Brett, chief executive of the RSA.

“But we aren’t standing still. We’ve had a lot of training for gardaí on drug recognition, which means gardaí conducting random breath tests for drink driving or stopping someone for impaired driving are quicker to spot the signs of drug use.”

Because of the complexity of drug tests — which check for seven categories of drugs — the Medical Bureau of the Road Safety Authority only test blood and urine samples for drugs when specifically requested by gardaí but bureau head, Professor Denis Cusack said that the number of requests was growing rapidly.

“We test around 6,000 blood and urine samples a year for alcohol and now about 30% of those are also tested for drugs. It’s quite a significant increase on a few years ago and we would anticipate that next year there will be a further increase,” said Prof Cusack.

Drink driving still dominates testing however, and the bureau tests 15,000 breath samples for alcohol in a year.

There were also more than 18,000 drink-driving prosecutions last year compared with fewer than 100 drug-driving prosecutions per year in recent years.

This is mainly because many motorists found with drugs in their system are also over the drink-driving limit and both offences come under the same law which classes both as driving under the influence of an intoxicant.

“The issue of poly-drug misuse is increasingly prevalent,” Noel Brett explained.
“Someone who takes cocaine with a few bottles of beer might move on to cannabis to come down.

“But there is also an issue of drug misuse alone. A lot of people are ignorant of the effects.

“They might be very clear on how alcohol affects driving but have little realisation of, for example, what cocaine does,” he added.

The RSA’s new campaign will use television advertising and target nightclubs and third-level institutions to explain the dangers of drug driving.

Meanwhile, gardaí warned yesterday the annual Christmas clampdown on intoxicated driving would continue throughout the new year’s celebrations.

Road deaths have fallen from 336 last year to 275 to date but safety campaigners are pushing to reach a target of reducing fatalities to just above 200 by 2010.

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Unions & Random Drug Testing

Random Drug Testing On Hold For Now

A federal judge has granted the request for a preliminary injunction the West Virginia American Federation of Teachers had filed.  The group is challenging Kanawha County’s random drug testing policy for teachers and school workers.

The Kanawha County Board of Education approved the policy back in October.

Attorneys for the WV-AFT are arguing that random drug tests qualify as illegal searches and are prohibited under the Fourth Amendment.  Attorneys for the Kanawha County Board of Education had argued that teachers and school service workers are in safety sensitive positions and, because of that, should be tested.

Another disgraceful action by the once proud Unions?

Source: WCHS-58 Charleston

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Oral Fluid Drug Tests – Accuracy Proven

Study Finds Oral Fluid Drug Test Results Comparable to Urine Testing
December 2008

According to a recent large-scale study, laboratory-based oral fluid drug testing results are comparable to urine drug testing positive rates for the same classes of drugs. Results of the study, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, were presented by J. Michael Walsh, Ph.D., on October 29 at the annual meeting of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists in Phoenix.

 

Drug Testing – New Laws and Impacts

Source Material: Boston Herald – December 2008

A voter-approved law reducing possession of small amounts of marijuana to a civil offense may threaten to unravel drug testing of police and other public employees, although there should be no link between the two topics.

The law, which goes into effect Jan. 2, prohibits government agencies and authorities from enforcing any punishment for pot possession with a fine greater than $100, according to the Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association, and defines possession so broadly as to include traces of pot in blood to urine to hair and fingernails.

“This very much threatens to undermine our ability to do the drug testing we do,” said Jack Collins, an attorney for the Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association.

Collins is calling for police departments to stop drug testing certain employees until the Legislature can explicitly allow public employees who fail drug tests to be punished. Without swift action, police departments and other agencies face lawsuits from unions protecting their members, Collins said.

“At this point, it looks like a violation of their rights, and then there’d be a lawsuit and it would cost thousands of dollars,” he warned.

( I am not an Attorney, like Mr. Collins, however, if a company has a written drug policy for safety purposes and follows the policy, drug testing is not only legal, but a legal and moral responsibility of every employer in today’s society)

Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless predicted the new law has far-reaching consequences for even school bus drivers and MBTA train operators, who could point to the law and say they can only be fined, not fired, for marijuana offenses.

“People given the critical job of looking after children or the general public, there’s a greater risk now they could be high,” Capeless warned.

Concerns about the viability of punishing people for flunking drug tests follow news reports of drug use by public workers. The Herald found that 77 MBTA employees have failed substance-abuse tests over the past three years.

A task force set up by Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke is examining the implications of the new law and how it will be enforced. Burke’s office is expected to provide answers to questions of drug testing by year’s end.

Meanwhile, the Boston Police Department plans to continue drug testing regardless of any uncertainty, said Elaine Driscoll. “Enforcing our drug policies is non-negotiable,” Driscoll said.

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Teachers, Random Drug Testing, Hawaii, & President Obama

Source: Fox Report – Fox News

Should drug-dealing public school employees be permitted?

Should that even be a question?

It is if you live in Hawaii.

The headline in The Washington Post on Sunday morning sums it up: “Despite Agreement, Hawaii Teachers Resist Drug Testing.” Does it get much plainer than that? Not according to reporter Mark Niesse:

Hawaii public school teachers signed off on first-in-the-nation statewide random drug testing in exchange for pay raises, but now the state claims the educators are trying to take the money and run.

Since the teachers’ union approved the pact nearly two years ago, they have accepted the 11 percent boost in pay while fighting the random tests as an illegal violation of their privacy rights. No teacher has been tested.

The showdown over teacher drug testing arose from the highly publicized arrests of six state Education Department employees in unrelated drug cases over a six-month period. One, Leilehua High School special education teacher Lee Anzai, pleaded guilty to selling more than $40,000 worth of crystal methamphetamine to an undercover agent.

To sum up the situation, the public schools have a drug problem–but they don’t know how big a problem it is, because there’s no drug testing.

Most Americans have come to accept workplace drug-testing as a necessary part of any comprehensive anti-drug program, but not the Hawaii teachers union.

And as for public school employees, well, you might think they would want to do everything possible to root out druggies from their midst–but if you thought that, you thought wrong. Instead, the public employee unions seem determined to obstruct efforts to clean up the mess. Most Americans have come to accept workplace drug-testing as a necessary part of any comprehensive anti-drug program, but not the Hawaii teachers union.

To her credit, Hawaii’s Republican Governor, Linda Lingle, has been pushing for a tougher approach to testing. But she is just one voice; powerful as she might be, she can be overruled by the combined power of the bureaucracy and the judiciary, backed up by the overwhelming Democratic state legislature.

A thorough rethinking of America’s educational system has long been needed: Just how do we get good teachers into the schools, and bad teachers out of the schools? But if this drug-testing case is any sort of indicator, we aren’t likely to get such a rethink. And yet this is not just a state issue–it is a national issue.

By coincidence, President-elect Barack Obama is in Hawaii now, on vacation. He has nothing to do with this sort of local scandal–yet. But once he becomes President, he will have some indirect responsibility for these and many other thorny questions.

As President, his job duties will include improving education. Yes, education has traditionally been a local concern, but over the last 30 years, Presidents of both parties have embraced a substantial federal role in upgrading the schools, as a matter of social justice as well as international competitiveness. As President Ronald Reagan put it, back in 1983, we are “a nation at risk,” jeopardized by underperforming education.

And so while the recent “report cards” issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests are ambiguous as to actual improvements in test scores, what’s decisively unambiguous is the degree to which America is falling behind the rest of the world. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. currently ranks 18th out of 36 industrialized countries. As one expert, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute, told United Press International: “The United States has rested on its laurels way too long, Other countries have increasingly caught up and surpassed the United States.”

Some experts say that we need to inject market forces–choice and competition–into education to make it better and more cost-effective. Others say that we mostly need more money. But it’s hard to imagine any legitimate expert saying that our national education strategy should include drugged-up teachers and other school employees remaining on the job.

And beginning next year, President Obama’s education secretary will be a longtime friend and colleague, Arne Duncan, the current Chicago schools chief. Which is to say, Secretary Duncan should be able to pick up the phone and say, “Mr. President, I think that we have a problem in Hawaii, where the teachers unions are resisting the most obvious and basic of reforms.” It will then be revealing how the 44th President responds.

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Boston Unions Not Interested in Safety

4 MBTA workers who failed drug tests still on job

BOSTON – More than 50 MBTA employees who failed random drug or alcohol tests over the last two years remain on the job.

The Boston Herald reviewed the transit system’s testing records after two trolley operators who were involved in accidents last month were fired after failing drug tests.

Of the more than 8,700 employees who were randomly tested since 2006, the review found 77 had failed, 23 of whom eventually lost their jobs or resigned. Fifty-four remain at work.
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The Herald reported that 12 bus drivers, two train operators and three streetcar operators were among those fired.

The T’s two-strike policy gives employees who fail substance abuse tests a second chance following a 40-day unpaid suspension. Operators who fail a test after an accident are fired immediately.

 

Boston Unions Not Interested in Safety

4 MBTA workers who failed drug tests still on job

BOSTON – More than 50 MBTA employees who failed random drug or alcohol tests over the last two years remain on the job.

The Boston Herald reviewed the transit system’s testing records after two trolley operators who were involved in accidents last month were fired after failing drug tests.

Of the more than 8,700 employees who were randomly tested since 2006, the review found 77 had failed, 23 of whom eventually lost their jobs or resigned. Fifty-four remain at work.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

The Herald reported that 12 bus drivers, two train operators and three streetcar operators were among those fired.

The T’s two-strike policy gives employees who fail substance abuse tests a second chance following a 40-day unpaid suspension. Operators who fail a test after an accident are fired immediately.

 

Drugged Truck Drivers on the Roads

(Source-Daily Examiner-Australia)
A POLICE operation has revealed that one in 38 truck drivers to be driving under the influence of drugs.

The statistic comes from the results of a three-day roadside drug testing blitz run by police.

Most of the truck drivers pleaded guilty.
As the test only screened for THC (marijuana) and methamphetamine, the actual number of drivers using drugs improperly is likely much higher.
The abuse of prescription drugs is the number one threat across most of the world according to international drug councils.

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Canadians and Drugged Driving

Drugging and driving on the rise in B.C.

Updated: Wed Dec. 10 2008 14:54:18

Darcy Wintonyk, ctvbc.ca

A new study says drinking and driving is slowing in B.C. — but it’s not all good news.

The 2008 British Columbia Roadside Survey found while fewer people were driving after drinking, many more were driving high.

Of 1,533 drivers surveyed in June by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, more than 10 per cent showed evidence of drug use, while 8.1 per cent tested positive for alcohol.

A total of 16.9 per cent tested positive for drugs, alcohol, or both.

Doug Beirness, a senior researcher at the CCSA, says while the findings about drinking and driving are encouraging, the message about drugs and driving may not be getting through.

“People still don’t think the use of drugs impairs their ability to drive a car,” said Beirness.

He cites the fact that while 16 to 18-year-olds didn’t test positive for booze, some were under the influence of drugs, which indicates they may not understand the risk associated with being high and driving.

Beirness says despite perceptions that drug use is less harmful to drivers, there is growing evidence drug impairment is also a major contributor to crashes.

A study conducted in 2004 showed that drugs, often combined with alcohol, were detected in up to 30% of fatally injured drivers.

Some interesting findings from the study:

* Drivers testing positive for drugs were represented by most age groups every night the survey was taken.
* Age was not a factor in drug use among most drivers.
* Middle-aged drivers, 45-54 years old, led positive testings for drugs.
* This behaviour decreased somewhat in drivers aged 55 and older.
* Drugs most frequently found were cannabis, cocaine, opiates, and cannabis and cocaine in combination.
* Drinking and driving peaked on Saturday nights.

The Roadside Alcohol and Drug Survey 2008 was conducted Wednesday through Saturday nights in Vancouver, Saanich and Abbotsford in June 2008. Of all drivers surveyed, 90 per cent agreed to provide a breath sample to measure alcohol levels and 80 per cent volunteered to provide a sample of oral fluid (saliva) to test for drug use.

The full report is expected to be released in early 2009.

The findings will be used to evaluate the effects of Bill C-2, legislation that allows police to conduct roadside comprehensive drug testing.

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Prescription Drug Abuse Kills Army Soldier

Source: The Associated Press
December 2, 2008

Test results show that the death of an Army gunner while on leave from Iraq in August was caused by an overdose of prescription pain medication.

Twenty-two-year-old XXXXXX was staying at his parents’ home for an 18-day break when they found him unconscious on Aug. 27, two days into his leave.

An autopsy did not show a cause of death, so more testing was ordered.

Those tests show that XXXXXX died of a lethal combination of methadone and oxycodone.

His parents say they believe their son’s wartime experiences in Iraq made it hard for him to sleep, and led him to take the drugs. He had not told his parents he was on any medication.

XXXXX had been deployed in March with the Army’s 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment.

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