{"id":437865,"date":"2026-05-21T05:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437865\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T05:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:42:13","slug":"ministers-announce-nationwide-rollout-of-roadside-drug-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437865\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministers announce nationwide rollout of roadside drug tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tests have been rolled out in several regions, including Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury, and were on track to be in place nationwide by the start of July.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about fixing a gap in our road safety system. Police have long been able to stop and breath test drivers for alcohol. It makes sense that they should also be able to screen drivers for impairing drugs,\u201d Bishop said.<\/p>\n

Rolling out drug tests across the country was a practical step towards safer roads, he said.<\/p>\n

Police Minister Mark Mitchell<\/a> said the nationwide rollout would strengthen police\u2019s ability to target a key contributor to death and serious injury in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\"PolicePolice Minister Mark Mitchell says the rate of positive roadside drug tests to date is 3.6%. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the roadside drug testing programme started late last year, police have used the operational knowledge, data and feedback from that first phase to train staff across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, the rate of positive tests was 3.6%, which was similar to the roadside alcohol breath testing rate, Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

If a driver returned a positive test, police would take a saliva sample for laboratory analysis and then do a second test.<\/p>\n

If the second test was positive, drivers could be prohibited from driving for 12 hours.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tests have been rolled out in several regions, including Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury, and were on track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25429,3401,42677,23158,111,43,139,69,1118,49612,16493,764],"class_list":["post-437865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-announce","tag-drug","tag-ministers","tag-nationwide","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-roadside","tag-rollout","tag-tests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437865","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=437865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}