We told you road side drug testing would penalise hundreds of thousands unnecessarily

Fears thousands of medicinal cannabis users set to be caught out in new drug-driving laws

A medicinal cannabis clinic founder says hundreds of thousands of legal users could be affected by new drug-driving laws.

Police will begin testing drivers for THC – the main active ingredient in cannabis – along with methamphetamine, MDMA (or ecstasy) and cocaine in Wellington next month, ahead of the nationwide rollout of new drug driving laws next year.

Cannabis Clinic founder and chief executive Dr. Waseem Alzaher told Morning Report he didn’t disagree with the need for drug testing, but wanted to see New Zealand follow countries such as Canada, Germany and the Netherlands that included impairment tests alongside saliva and blood tests.

“The overall move is a good move, but what we need to consider adding into it is impairment, because you could test positive for cannabis but be entirely unimpaired in your functioning and that’s the elephant in the room we’re not addressing.”

TDB has been making this warning for some time over the new roadside drug testing.

We have pointed out time and time and time again that this is a ticking time bomb, and that it will create a drag net for Police to use which will actually find a whole raft of innocent people guilty.

We have pointed out this will hurt Māori the most because of the subjective nature of the tests and because data shows us Māori are targeted by Police far more than pakeha.

We remind everyone that cannabis is a legal medicine which you can buy from the bloody Chemist Warehouse.

These people who have legal marijuana prescriptions and who are using cannabis will get caught with it in their system but they won’t be impaired.

It’s not just the 400,000 who use cannabis illegally, it will be the 120,000 legal prescription users who will get targeted by this as well.

A joint you smoke on Thursday will show up on Monday even though you are no longer under the impairment of the smoke.

This will rapidly become a human rights issue as Police simply use these new powers as a trawling tool.

We warned you this would happen.

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