DRUG TESTING ON Irish roads officially came into being last Thursday morning at 12am – and one of the first drivers stopped has tested positive for cocaine.
While the new legislation does not make drug-driving an offence (it already was one, dating back to the 1960s), it does legislate for gardaí to be able to test for certain banned stimulants, specifically cocaine, cannabis, opiates, and benzodiazepines.
Last night, gardaí tweeted that a checkpoint on the Stillorgan dual carriageway would be one of the first to test for both alcohol and drug-driving.
And just three hours later, clocked at just before 11.30pm, a sister checkpoint on the N4/Galway road in west Dublin saw a driver return a positive result for cocaine.
Gardaí confirmed that driver had already been banned for 10 years, and a court summons is due to follow.
Drug testing has been brought into play here after statistics from the Medical Bureau for Road Safety showed that drug driving is a real problem in Ireland.
Cannabis is the main drug detected on Irish roads, and the offenders tend to be young men.
The introduction of drug testing was announced last week via a, well, unusual video campaign depicting a young man undergoing a roadside drug test all the while his uvula (the thing that hangs down the back of your throat) calls him a liar for denying driving under the influence.
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