The new drug driving roadside tests will punish Māori the most.
Cannabis is the most widely used illegal drug in New Zealand and we know from previous research that Māori get targeted for it and punished for having it far more than Pakeha.
The real trouble with the new drug driving road tests is that they will only test for the presence of cannabis in your system, they don’t test for impairment.
What do I mean by that?
I mean a person may have smoked some cannabis on Friday, but they will still test positive on the Tuesday.
They are not impaired to drive, but they test positive anyway.
All this will do is find a whole lot off New Zealanders guilty of having cannabis in their system, it won’t be proving they are too impaired to drive.
When you consider medicinal cannabis is now a legal drug that you can purchase from the Chemist Warehouse, that means a lot of Kiwis are about to get pinged, not because they are too stoned to drive, but because they have THC still in their system.
We know Māori get targeted for this crime more and we know they get punched more harshly.
Māori will be targeted for roadside drug tests and they will fail them, again, NOT because they are too impaired to drive, but because the cannabis is still registering in their system.
We want our roads to be safe, we demand they be safe, but road side drug testing is not the solution, it’s merely an excuse to catch people out rather than make roads safer.
The penalty for this illusion of safety will be paid most by Māori.
Will most punish those who support Terrorist Tekahika — that particular Kiwi of Maori descent, and Gunn — that particular Kiwi thieving abusive minion of Peters’, and maybe Stuff too.
When punishment is a laugh.