Ottawa Police Department Rejects Roadside Cannabis Test Kits

Police in the city of Ottawa, Ontario, will not be using a roadside drug-testing machine once cannabis is legalized in Canada next month. The federal government recently approved the Dräger DrugTest 5000 for use by police departments across the country.

The DrugTest 5000, manufactured by German manufacturer Dräger with U.S. operations based in Irving, Texas, hit the market in 2009 and is currently in use in about a dozen U.S. states, as well as in Europe and Australia. A California judge in 2016 found the machines to be scientifically reliable in a vehicular manslaughter case.

The DrugTest 5000 tests oral swabs for cannabinoids, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, benzodiazepines, and methadone. The devices are rechargeable and portable, weighing in at about 10 pounds and approximately the size of a home coffee maker.

Costs $6000 too.
Does Cannabis Use Equal Impairment?
But the DrugTest 5000 only tests for the presence of THC and other drugs in a person’s system. Marilyn Huestis, who researched cannabis with the National Institute on Drug Abuse for 20 years, told Science Daily that the presence of THC can’t gauge impairment.


“There is no one blood or oral fluid concentration that can differentiate impaired and not impaired,” said Huestis. “It’s not like we need to say, ‘Oh, let’s do some more research and give you an answer.’ We already know. We’ve done the research.”

Machine Will Face Scrutiny In Canada
In Canada, legal analysts believe that the use of the DrugTest 5000 will not go unchallenged. Kyla Lee, a Vancouver defense attorney that specializes in impaired driving cases, believes that the machine will not survive constitutional review by the courts because the decision to use it is often made arbitrarily.

“Unlike alcohol, where you can smell liquor on somebody’s breath or see evidence of consumption in other ways, cannabis is different,” she said.

“There are going to be numerous court challenges across the country to this,” Lee added.

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GoatSoup said:

"Too much Hassle"



You can bet on that.

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GoatSoup said:

"Too much Hassle"



You can bet on that.

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schuylaar said:

there's no way to tell how long thc has been in your system..it stays in your fat and everyone is different in how long it takes to get rid off..you could've legally smoked 30 days ago and still test positive.

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Budley Doright said:

They don’t know WTF their doing . Gonna be a court challenge with the first charge.

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