The message around drink-driving is pretty clear – don’t do it. But what will happen once recreational-use cannabis is legalized in Canada? How many people will jump behind the wheel after smoking pot and what unique risks will this being to Canadian society?
Drug-impaired driving is one of the primary headaches many people have around the legalization of cannabis. In April, the Liberal government announced a plan to overhaul Canada’s impaired driving laws and create a regime that would be among the strongest in the world.
Justin Trudeau’s party proposes to make it a criminal offence to drive within two hours of having an illegal level of drugs in the blood, with a mandatory $1,000 first offence fine and escalating penalties for repeat offenders. Another proposed change is the introduction of new tools to better detect drug-impaired drivers. It gives police the authority to demand saliva tests from drivers who they suspect of being high.
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“Everybody is concerned with drug-impaired driving, including the insurance industry,” said Ivan Ross Vrana, senior account director at HKS Strategies. “I have a concern on the policing fronts and from insurance purposes.
“A driver gets pulled over by police and is told to take a drugs test. How reliable is that test? It’s not like alcohol where a person is impaired or they’re not. What if the driver took cannabis for medical purposes – what’s the distinction there? I hope that the tests they produce are sophisticated enough to differentiate between different cannabinoids and the different uses of cannabis. It’s going to be a huge headache trying to curtail, measure and correct drug-induced driving.”
Drug impairment tests are often deemed unreliable and untrustworthy, particularly by courts of law. This is one of the biggest challenges of cannabis legalization, according to Karen Landrum, consulting actuary at Merlinos and Associates. The tests cannot provide accurate data like alcohol breathalyzers, so it’s all based on judgement, said Landrum.
There have been some attempts by Canadian police to prepare for the upcoming challenges. Between mid-December and early March, officers from seven jurisdictions across Canada piloted new roadside testing devices that worked by collecting saliva samples of suspected drug-impaired drivers. However, the tests are still not completely reliable.
“Public health and public safety risks are top of mind for everybody. What Canada needs, is a widespread education campaign to get people to understand the risks before cannabis is legalized,” commented Barinder Rasode, president and CEO of NICHE Canada. “Sometimes things don’t work well because of a lack of understanding about the facts. It’s really important for research to be done, and for that research to be released to the general public so they can better understand the risks and the product.”
Learn more about the cannabis insurance industry at the upcoming Cannabis Cover Masterclass, which is taking place on October 10, 2017 in Toronto at the St. Andrew’s Club & Conference Centre. The event will feature a host of leading insurance influencers from the likes of Next Wave, CUBIC Health, and HKS Strategies, bringing together key perspectives on regulation, cannabis-specific risk, business growth and how legalization could affect the insurance market. Visit cannabiscover.ca for a full list of speakers, the full agenda and to register for the event.
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