The Tasmanian Government Department of Health website has been updated to reference the defence available to un-impaired patients who are detected driving with prescribed medicinal cannabis in their system.
Whilst acknowledging, “Medicinal cannabis can cause impairment and affect fitness to drive, and a person who drives a vehicle while under the influence of a drug to the extent that the person is incapable of having proper control of the vehicle is guilty of an offence (even if the drug is prescribed). It is recommended that patients do not drive whilst being treated with medicinal cannabis.”
The page with information for patients and carers in Tasmania also reiterates prior comments made by Tasmanian Police.
“THC is the main psychoactive substance in cannabis and is present in some medicinal cannabis products. Driving with any detectable amount of THC in your system is an offence in Tasmania, unless the product was obtained and administered in accordance with the Poisons Act 1971.”
The defence is provided within Tasmania’s Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1970 – Part II, Division 1, Section 6A. Driving with prescribed illicit drug in blood. Subsection (2).
The legislation states,
(1) Subject to subsection (2) , a person who drives a motor vehicle while a prescribed illicit drug is present in his or her blood is guilty of an offence.
(2) A person does not commit an offence against subsection (1) if the prescribed illicit drug was obtained and administered in accordance with the Poisons Act 1971 .
Tasmania is the only state or territory in Australia with sensible cannabis driving legislation and has fuelled ongoing demand for Australia’s mainland to follow suit.
Currently in NSW, it is an offence to drive a vehicle with an illicit substance in your system such as THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) pursuant to section 111(1) Road Transport Act 2013 (NSW).
Sydney City Crime’s Principal Solicitor Mark Davis commented on the arbitrary nature of these laws:
“This has become a de facto means of drug testing all citizens, and they’re doing it through licensing.”
“There’s no onus on the police to prove these people were affected by drugs in any way, but you still have hundreds of people ending up with criminal convictions – even for trace elements in their system.”
Adding further insult to injury, a study conducted by the Lambert Initiative of Sydney University published results casting doubt on the accuracy of mobile drug testing devices.
Research suggests the devices currently used return both false positives and false negatives.
The study, published in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis, found that the devices frequently failed to detect high
concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). False negative rates were 9 percent and 16 percent for the two devices but they also sometimes gave a positive result when saliva THC concentrations were very low or negligible (false positive rate of 5% and 10%).
For more information please visit http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/psbtas/medicinal_cannabis/information_for_patients_carers
