While it has long been recognised that driving under the influence of alcohol represents a serious road safety hazard, it is only relatively recently that the issue of driving under the influence of other drugs has come to serious attention in Australia. WA Police have been conducting random roadside tests of drivers and riders for illicit drugs since October 2007, in much the same way they are tested for alcohol. The saliva tests target THC (the active component in cannabis) and amphetamine type substances including MDMA (ecstasy).
In this poster we examine the data collected by the WA 2013 Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) to examine the degree to which people who inject drugs on a regular basis may be driving motor vehicles while under the influence of these drugs and the level of impact achieved by the introduction of roadside saliva testing for drugs has had on curtailing these behaviours.