Funding questions as drug testing kits to be introduced

POLICE officers will be able to test motorists for illegal drugs from this spring, ministers have announced

Mike Penning, police minister, (pictured) and Robert Goodwill, roads minister told the national roads policing conference that the kit needed for officers to test drivers for cannabis and cocaine has been approved. Kits would cost £25 each, they said, and the one-time testing element of that will cost just 25 pence.

However, under questioning from Alan Jones, former Police Federation roads policing lead, Mr Penning conceded the more accurate total cost to forces was between £2,500 and £3,000.

He added that the government would not provide forces with extra money for the technology but urged forces to collaborate on buying the equipment to make it cheaper.

Mr Goodwill said police and crime commissioners should see this as a priority area for funding. He told the meeting that legislation comes into force at the beginning of March which prohibits the presence of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine rather than current laws which state a motorist must be impaired as a result of the drugs.

He added that the government is currently setting the legal limits so that a person must have taken the drug knowingly rather than merely been in the presence of someone who has, for example, been smoking cannabis.

See more in the PFEW Police magazine http://www.policemag.co.uk/updates/2574.aspx

Picture from Police Federation of England and Wales.