Drugs Don't Work

The Home Office has announced another measure designed to speed up the criminal justice process. This year police forces are going to be given equipment in the police station, which they can use to test motorists for the presence of drugs.

Whilst the majority of alcohol-related prosecutions are for the offence of driving with excess alcohol, it is also an offence to drive a mechanically propelled vehicle whilst impaired through drugs or alcohol. The penalties for this offence are the same as driving after consuming excess alcohol.

At present, after arresting a motorist on suspicion of driving whilst unfit through drugs, the police are required to carry out a number of tests that are intended to establish whether or not the motorist might be impaired. A medical practitioner will then attend the police station and give their view about whether or not a motorist is impaired and if they are, authorise a blood sample to be taken.

Under proposals announced this month, police forces may soon be provided with devices able to determine the proportion of drugs in a motorist's body. This means that medical practitioners would not have to attend the police station to evaluate a suspect and authorise a blood sample to be taken.

Companies interested in providing the equipment have until January to submit their proposals to the Home Office. It is understood that testing will begin in February.

As with other proposals relating to drink driving offences, such as enabling a suspect to plead guilty in the police station and the recently introduced 'virtual courts', this latest proposal is designed to expedite matters at the police station. Two issues arise: firstly will this actually work and secondly, is this entirely fair anyway?

The proposal is that officers will be able to use the device to test whether a person has specific levels of a drug in their system and then take a blood sample if the device gives a positive reading. Indeed the Home Office states that "a positive test on an approved drug screener means a blood specimen can be taken straight away without a medical practitioner's involvement."

Would you want a police officer to be able to take a blood sample from you if you were at a police station? We suspect not. Have they been properly trained? Are they medically qualified? These are all legitimate questions in our view. At present, a motorist has a defence to a charge of failing to provide a specimen of breath / blood / urine if they can convince a court that they had a reasonable excuse for not providing such a sample. A police officer's failure to produce any form of medical certificate to show that they had a level of medical training would, we would suggest, give rise to a 'reasonable excuse'. The effect of the proposal in practice will be that all officers conducting these procedures will have to be medically trained and be able to prove their training and qualifications upon request or a medical practitioner will have to be called for. This would eliminate any time-saving.

The Government is clearly concerned that any motorists found to be driving whilst unfit as a result of the consumption of drugs are dealt with severely. There can be no disagreement that such motorists pose a hazard to all of us. However the question should always be whether or not there is evidence that a person is actually unfit through drugs in the first place.

Even if there were to be a significant proportion of drugs in a person's body, does that necessarily mean that a person was unfit to drive? Consideration will still need to be given to how far, for example, a person had driven before being involved in an accident or whatever it was that caused the police to attend the scene and arrest the motorist in the first place.

We are concerned that the starting point seems to be an assumption that everyone who enters a police station having been arrested on suspicion of committing an offence is guilty and must therefore be dealt with swiftly. Very little consideration seems to be given to the importance of establishing whether or not an individual is actually guilty of any wrongdoing in the first place. The Home Office itself actually states "[the approval process] also makes sure the results are not susceptible to legal challenge, leading to convictions being overturned."

How can a legal challenge be a bad thing in and of itself?

We cannot once again allow ourselves to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone who attends a police station for whatever reason is automatically guilty of an offence and given that they need to be dealt with, ought to be dealt with swiftly. This is all the more surprising, given that this is a country in which a person is supposed to be believed innocent until proven guilty.

This article was written by Philip Somarakis, a member of the motoring offences solicitors team at Blake Lapthorn.