New Drug Driving Road side tests are a political farce

I believe that we don’t ever spend enough time understanding and acknowledging what a fascist little police state NZ truly is.

The appalling manner in which NZ treated and abused conscientious objectors in work camps far more severe than any of the other anglo nations of Australia, Britain, Canada or America during the world wars.

The manner in which the state arrested and detained and harassed the Left during the 1930s and 1940s.

The way the Government turned the full force of the state against Unions to the point that even giving a hungry child of a Unionist one slice of bread was illegal.

And that’s not to forget the way white settler culture robbed and stole Māori land and passed laws that specifically targeted them.

We have such. laid back culture, it’s almost horizontal.

I think NZ has a cultural hangover from our settler days.

The NZ Police Force grew out of the Mounted Constabulary, a thug  force who was ostensibly put together to go bash the bejesus out of drunk Māori at the edge of the settlement.

The unspoken deal between white settler NZ and the Mounted Constabulary was, ‘we will turn a blind eye to whatever heavy handed tactics you want to use, as long as you make us feel safe’.

That mindset of turning a blind eye to Police tactics to protect us from our fears of the things that go bump in the night has extended all the way from our settler culture to today.

Look at the latest Drug Driving powers and laws and appreciate they are nothing more than a new drag net to legally harass Kiwis…

‘Roadside drug testing’s puritanical political agenda’

The Government has announced the rollout of roadside drug testing for four illicit substances – THC (cannabis), MDMA (ecstasy), methylamphetamine (meth), and cocaine – after an amendment to the Land Transport Act. But just because these drugs are illicit does not mean they always impair driving ability, which makes me question the intent of the scheme and whether public safety is really the priority being exercised here.

Police will be able to take an oral sample, and a testing kit will flag potential drug presence, which will be confirmed (or not) by proper laboratory analysis. Drivers with a positive result will not be allowed to drive for 12 hours, and a positive lab result means an infringement notice. Refusal to take the test carries the same penalties as a positive result.

The dangers of driving “impaired” by substances including alcohol, opioids, and other medications are well documented. As stated in the Government’s press release: “Around 30 percent of all road deaths now involve an impairing drug. If you take drugs and drive, you’re putting innocent lives at risk – and we will not tolerate it.”

Many drugs can reduce reaction times, fine motor skills, or critical thinking and judgment. Drunk driving is a leading cause of road-based injury, and both licit and illicit drugs are increasingly implicated as causes or contributing factors in road accidents.

At first glance this announcement may seem like a no-brainer, but the specifics of this scheme raises the question of what is really behind this plan. Is this a genuine effort to improve road safety by “cracking down” on “drug drivers”, or is this an attempt to police drug use under the guise of road safety?

Driving impaired is clearly a problem for road safety, but this scheme does not test for impairment. Rather, it tests for (historical) use of drugs. Although those can be the same thing, often the link between drug use and driving impairment is much more complex than these roadside devices can know.

Take cannabis, for which the criminal blood limit has been set at 3ng/ml of THC. For occasional users such a level can be detected for about 24 hours after consumption; for frequent users this can be over 72 hours (three days). If you smoke on a Sunday afternoon, you could be over the legal limit until Thursday morning. Cocaine is similarly detectable by these kits for about 12 hours, even though the effects of the drug hardly last an hour.

The Attorney-General’s report on the legislative amendment states: “The Ministry of Transport and Police consider that there is likely to be a high number of drug-impaired drivers who are not captured under the [current Compulsory Impairment Test which includes the hop-on-one-leg test] regime because there may be no observable signs of impairment at the time of driving.”

If the impairment is not observable, there are no deficits of coordination, speech, or motor skills detected by specially trained police, then what does it mean to be impaired?

…The Daily Blog has been banging on about this flawed process for over a decade, THIS IS NOT ABOUT IMPAIRMENT it’s a drag net to catch out drug users without the annoyance of having too actually justify the interference.

We are allowing the Police vast new powers over us at a time when they have proven they don’t deserve such powers.

The McSkimming’s scandal has blossomed from being a ‘few bad apples’ to now 20 staff caught using their phones and laptops to view porn…

Twenty police staff under investigation over device misuse – charges possible

…and let’s not forget the lies Police have been caught out with alcohol breathalysers…

Over 100 police officers investigated after 30,000 breath tests falsified

…so why allow Police new powers to drug test you for Drugs that are’t impairing you when legal prescription drugs are ignored?

This isn’t about public safety, it’s a vast expansion of powers to infringe on your civil liberties and because NZ is such a laid back culture, we gloss over these erosions of our civil liberties without ever challenging them

In 1943, NZs Ambassador to America, Sir George Laking, reflected on the surprising ability of the NZ Government to pass authoritarian powers against the citizens of NZ with little to no resistance from Kiwis by saying, “Much that was accomplished in those early years was possible only because of the absence of any detailed or sustained public interest in the issues”.

We have become experts in a hyper laid back culture of turning a blind eye.

Remember – there is no depression in NZ, or corruption and we don’t know how lucky we are.

You silly, stupid, sleepy Hobbits.

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