Drugged drivers worry Townsville police

Drugged drivers worry Townsville police
http://www.abc.net.au/news/items/200511/1518167.htm?northqld

This item is egregious.
It could as much as read “Horseflies worry health officials”.

There is a structural failure in the foundation of the police concern,
the presumption that increased enforcement ‘of illicit drugs’ is in some
way going to positively impact on driving retaliated harms based upon
this elevated interdiction method.

While the writer agrees that there is an onus of care due to a community
in delivering effective harm prevention strategies what is at debate,
but remains unexplored, is the methodology and effectiveness of
warrantless and personally invasive ‘random’ testing. There has been no
cost benefit analysis, no community dialogue, and no informed consent.
Such blanket measures break normative rules of justice and civil
society, esp the right to Magna Carta principal to ‘travel the kings
highway’.

The ‘zero tolerant’ inference is that ANY level of drug is bad, absent
evidence (rather than police opinion) that proof of impairment. This
needs further public debate and scientific rigor.

Alcohol impairment for the greater part is ‘directly correlated’ to
potential for and evidence of many subsequent harms. The public has a
buy in here, it accepts that these risks are both quantifiable and in
general, a knowable ‘personal responsibility’. The important role of
driver education and progressing the cultural/social idiom has gone
further than purely enforcement to mitigate that risk. It achieves this
by having ‘tolerance’ of low level use equating to low level of risk of
harm.

There are many drugs both licit and illicit, and behaviors legal and
illegal that contribute to poor road safety. Prescribed medications,
tiredness, stress, kids (distractions) etc. are prevalent, and also
cause accidents.

We have to be very careful implementing this kind of societal sanction,
ensuring that we are doing it for right reasons… We certainly need
more than this kind of horsefly analysis.

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