Transport Minister Chris Bishop said the devices would have built-in positive screening thresholds to avoid capturing drivers with low levels of drugs. Photo: 123RF
Police are going shopping for high-tech equipment that can handle new roadside drug testing.
Their new tender is seeking devices that can screen for four drugs - cannabis, meth, MDMA or ecstasy, and cocaine.
A law to bring in roadside testing passed in 2023, but no devices could be found to do it, so the law is being changed.
This allows for devices that do screening, similar to at drink-drive checkpoints, rather than having to test oral fluid to an evidentiary standard.
"Only 26 percent of people think they are likely to be caught," Transport Minister Chris Bishop told Parliament during the bill's second reading in January.
Devices would have built-in positive screening thresholds to avoid capturing drivers with low levels of drugs, he said.
Drivers who refuse a drugs test would be immediately banned from driving for 12 hours.
Three-in-10 fatal crashes involve drugs.
Police already ran a tender back in 2022 under the bill as it was then framed, only to fail to find any device that could do what the law required.
"The limitations of ... devices were known throughout the development of the new legislation," said official papers.
Bishop said the government was "delivering where the previous government failed".
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