A year into legal cannabis, impaired driving remains Edmonton's chief of police's largest concern—although he notes legalization has neither shrunk the illegal market nor is the community experiencing its full effect due to supply shortages.
Next week—one day before legalization's first birthday—a city committee will hear the Edmonton Police Service has seen a "significant increase" in drug-impaired driving in the last year, and dedicates, at minimum, six times more resources to process a cannabis-impaired driver than a drunk driver.
"Impaired driving, really, there is no solution to it yet through technology. I know they're working on it," Chief Dale McFee said to reporters on Tuesday, adding he feels like law enforcement is "waiting on technology."
The concern is echoed in the report by the Edmonton Police Commission, which will be delivered to the City of Edmonton's Community and Public Services Committee on Oct. 16.
The report, a quarterly update on the community impacts and financial costs of legalization, was requested by city officials last year after EPS was denied a budget boost to, in part, deal with cannabis legalization.
According to the commission's report, EPS arrested 94 drug-impaired drivers in the first eight months of 2019, of which 29 were suspected to be high.
For the same period in 2018, EPS made 69 drug-impaired driving arrests, of which 17 drivers were suspected of being impaired by cannabis.
The report also notes the minimum time required to process a high driver is six hours, while processing a drunk driver takes one hour. The estimate includes the time need to conduct a specialized field sobriety test, a test by a drug recognition expert, and to take a blood ample.
Comparatively, the costs of processing drunk and high drivers is $89 and $537, respectively—and the price difference grows when more officers are needed on cannabis-impaired cases, says the commission.
"(The process is) based on a science so it's strong, but those things don't happen in a period of an hour, if you know what I mean. So you're tying an individual officer or two, probably three officers, to do one impaired driving case," McFee said.
"It's time that we're taking two, three officers off the street to actually be the extra eyes in community."
McFee added legalization hasn't crimped the illegal market, referencing recent seizures by EPS of illegal cannabis products totaling over $500,000.
"That business is alive and well. There will always be somebody that makes it cheaper," he commented.
"So I think from a budget perspective and a resource perspective, I think we're right now—with the exception of impaired driving and the impaired impact—we're in a good position."
The city committee will also hear that EPS is noticing an increase in "erratic and dangerous behavior" by cannabis users who have no history with police or the justice system. And the report cites two explosions at home labs where shatter, a cannabis derivative, was being made.
