More cases of drivers impaired by drugs

• The number of police stops where drivers had drugs in their system has increased sevenfold since 2008, with over one in 10 impaired driving reports now related to drugs.

Over the same period, incidents of drug-impaired driving (DID) reported by police increased “significantly” compared to alcohol-impaired incidents, which have dropped significantly over the last decade, according to new report published by Public Safety Canada.

In 2021, police reported nearly 7,500 drug-impaired driving incidents, continuing the growth trend since 2009, when there were only 1,407. Numbers increased particularly quickly beginning in 2018, the first full year cannabis became legal in Canada.

Operating a motor vehicle while impaired by drugs now represents 11 per cent of all impaired driving charges laid by police, compared to 1.6 per cent in 2009.

“In most jurisdictions across Canada, data sources ... tend to indicate an ongoing trend over the past 10-12 years of DID incidents increasing as a proportion of all impaired-driving incidents, with cannabis being one of the most frequently detected class of drug among drivers,” reads the report.

The report notes survey data that shows frequent cannabis users increasingly believe the drug does not impair driving. It also cites a study that found drivers injured in a DID incident had higher levels of THC (the chemical that imparts a high in cannabis) in their blood.

The Public Safety findings also note that alcohol-impaired driving offences are much more likely to lead to criminal charges compared to drugs.

“Driving while impaired by a drug has been a criminal offence since 1925, but this offence has always been challenging to prove in court. Detecting and proving impairment caused by drugs is different and more complex than detecting and proving impairment caused by alcohol,” the report noted.

Though drug-impaired driving incidents reported by police have increased rapidly since cannabis legalization in late 2017, the report says the increase is more likely due to factors such as more power to officers to detect and investigate drug consumption as well as new tools that are available to them.

When the federal government legalized cannabis in 2017, it also enacted stricter DUI laws that gave police new sweeping powers to stop drivers they suspected to be under the influence of either drugs or alcohol.

Those included approving the use of new “approved drug screening equipment” during roadside stops, removing many barriers that prevented police from demanding a driver's blood sample and creating new criminal offences that set legal blood drug concentration limits (like 5ng of THC per millilitre of blood).