{"id":155830,"date":"2025-11-27T05:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T05:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/155830\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T05:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T05:21:09","slug":"fears-thousands-of-medicinal-cannabis-users-will-be-caught-out-by-new-drug-driving-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/155830\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears thousands of medicinal cannabis users will be caught out by new drug-driving laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alzaher said he was advising patients to wait 12 hours before driving \u2013 ideally taking medication at night so they would be unimpaired by the morning, however, the sensitivity and accuracy of the tests remained to be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, how do we manage it when we\u2019ve got people who are being prescribed cannabis safely and are under medical supervision just like they could be for other medicines … you shouldn\u2019t be punished or face consequences as a result of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s thought about 120,000-130,000 New Zealanders are being prescribed medicinal cannabis<\/a> and about 400,000 are using cannabis illicitly, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows someone who\u2019s using cannabis through illicit or legal means, and we\u2019ve known for thousands of years this plant has lots of potential benefits for people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe [The Cannabis Clinic] have 60,000 people legally prescribed cannabis for who could face negative outcomes by being stood down and potentially fined \u2013 which they then have to appeal \u2013 even though they\u2019re doing the right thing and have been prescribed medicinal cannabis, and that\u2019s going to be an issue for Kiwis around the country,\u201d Alzaher said.<\/p>\n

\"ReturningReturning two positive saliva tests could lead to a 12-hour driving ban and fines. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

Returning two positive roadside saliva tests could result in a 12-hour driving ban.<\/p>\n

Saliva tests would then be sent to a laboratory, and if levels above legal thresholds were confirmed, it would result in an infringement notice, including a $200 fine and 50 demerit points.<\/p>\n

If a saliva test<\/a> was refused or police requested a blood test, the consequences could be more severe.<\/p>\n

If a blood sample breached the \u201chigh risk\u201d threshold under the legislation, penalties included a $4500 fine, up to three months in prison and a mandatory six-month licence disqualification.<\/p>\n

Infringements could be appealed via a medical defence by showing a prescription or ID card from a prescriber, and Alzaher urged medicinal patients to ensure they had one or both.<\/p>\n

Australian researcher Dr Michael White, an adjunct senior fellow at the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide who has researched road accidents involving cannabis, said the tests were nearly worthless when it came to picking up whether someone was impaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of research that says regular cannabis users are not impaired even if [tested] immediately after taking it so that produces … questions of justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a scattergun approach, many people who are regular users won\u2019t be impaired even if they test positive,\u201d Dr White said.<\/p>\n

The NZ Drug Foundation<\/a> warned many medicinal cannabis users could be caught out, given the drug can show up even three days after use.<\/p>\n

Others, such as senior biosciences lecturer Dr Catherine Crofts, raised concerns about legal users of other drugs, such as those taking ADHD medication containing amphetamine, such as dexamphetamine or lisdexamfetamine, which around half of New Zealanders taking ADHD medication currently use.<\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alzaher said he was advising patients to wait 12 hours before driving \u2013 ideally taking medication at night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5195,3595,17285,9525,103239,28164,55605,12472,55606,99132,117,111,43,139,69,1118,3111,2742,16742,1533],"class_list":["post-155830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-be","tag-by","tag-cannabis","tag-caught","tag-drugdriving","tag-fears","tag-keiller","tag-laws","tag-macduff","tag-medicinal","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-out","tag-thousands","tag-users","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}