Drugs and Driving
The final item of business is a debate on motion S1M-2874, in the name of Bristow Muldoon, on drugs and driving.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament expresses concern about the number of lives lost in road traffic crashes that may have been caused by people driving whilst under the influence of legal and illegal drugs; recognises that, in law, driving while unfit through drugs is an offence; notes that Transport Research Laboratory tests demonstrated a significant increase between the 1980s and 1990s in the percentage of people testing positive for illegal drugs who have been involved in fatal collisions; welcomes the launch by the British Medical Association of its web resource on research that has been undertaken and is currently in progress; considers that there should be speedier and more specific and co-ordinated research in order that appropriate and conclusive drug testing devices can be introduced, and believes that there should be a Scottish campaign in order to educate the public that the side effects of illegal and certain prescribed drugs can affect their ability to drive.
I lodged the motion many months ago, in the wake of an initiative taken by the British Medical Association, which launched a web-based resource on research into the impact of drugs on driving and the shortage of appropriate testing. The initiative called for research into testing techniques and for public education campaigns to inform people of the dangers of the use of illegal and legal drugs and of the effect of drugs on their ability to drive.
Some time ago, I lost any expectation that the motion would be picked for members' business, as several months have now passed since it was lodged, but I am still pleased that it has been called for debate today. It is perhaps opportune that the debate has been secured shortly after the festive period, when there is a focus on drink-driving. We now have the opportunity to consider the impact of the increasing prevalence of drugs on fatal and non-fatal accidents.
I thank the BMA for its initiative in setting up the web-based resource that I mentioned, for drawing the issue to the attention of Parliament and for encouraging us to respond to the issue.
I will refer to the total number of road deaths at the United Kingdom and Scottish levels. Members know that I have a strong interest in transport issues and in transport-related safety. One of this country's most appalling records is our degree of tolerance of deaths on the road caused by whatever means.
We accept deaths on the road that we would not accept if they were caused by other modes of transport. There are more than 300 deaths on the road each year in Scotland and more than 3,000 in the UK. In some of the major rail crashes that we have experienced, tragically, upwards of 30 people have lost their lives at one time. The number of deaths on the roads equates to in the order of 110 major rail crashes every year, but because the deaths tend to happen in low numbers—in ones or twos—they do not make headline news.
On other occasions, we have concentrated on the dangers of inappropriate driving and speed. We have also concentrated on alcohol and driving. One of the issues on which the Parliament has not often concentrated is the negative influence of drugs on driving. By drugs I mean not only illegal drugs, but legal drugs, including painkillers, antidepressants and tranquillisers. A recently published research paper by the University of Dundee revealed that about 110 deaths are caused in the UK each year by drivers who are under the influence of legal drugs.
Will the member advise the chamber whether in post-mortems for all road-related deaths there is screening to establish whether drugs were present in the body at the time of the accident?
I cannot give Brian Adam a definitive answer to that question, but I imagine that such screening takes place. The research that has been produced by the University of Dundee and the BMA refers to the percentage of people involved in fatal accidents who are found to have legal drugs in their system. If Brian Adam wants to help me to answer his question, he is welcome to do so. It is estimated that 110 road deaths per year are the result of prescribed or legal drugs. The proportion of fatal accidents in which there have been positive tests for illegal drugs has risen fourfold for cannabis in the past 10 to 15 years and sixfold for all illegal drugs.
Is not one of the major problems with the statistics the fact that cannabis, other illegal drugs and prescribed drugs are often found in the system in combination with alcohol? That makes it difficult to determine whether an accident was caused by alcohol, drugs or—in the case of prescribed drugs—the illness for which drugs were being taken.
I accept the point that Mr Raffan makes, which I intended to address later in my speech. In many cases, one illegal or prescribed drug is present in combination with other prescribed or illegal drugs or with alcohol. An accident may occur for a complex range of reasons. The BMA indicates that there is a need for more research into the impact that each drug has on people's ability to drive. In many cases, there is insufficient evidence to determine that.
Last week, the Sunday Mail identified a case in which a driver was found to have heroin, ecstasy, methadone, diazepam, cannabis and codeine in their system. The driver concerned was prosecuted, but the case reinforces the point that a combination of drugs or of drugs and alcohol may be present in the bodies of people who are involved in accidents.
The need to improve detection rates for driving while under the influence of illegal drugs is highlighted by the fact that, during the recent festive period, Strathclyde police detected 84 people for driving under the influence of alcohol but charged only three people with driving under the influence of drugs. Taken together with the statistics to which I referred earlier, those figures suggest that a number of people who are driving under the influence of drugs are not being detected.
That is not a failure of the police. It is the result of not having in place roadside detection systems, apart from systems based on failed impairment tests, which test people's ability to perform certain tasks. That in itself is not a comprehensive system, and not all police officers are trained in such tests. If a regular police officer identifies someone whom they feel needs such a failed impairment test, they are required to call out trained officers to carry out the test before they decide to arrest the person and take blood or urine samples to test whether they are under the influence of illegal drugs.
I have concentrated quite heavily on testing and detection, which is a key issue. In my last minute, I will address education and awareness, which are a key part of so many aspects of safety on the roads.
I am sure that many of the people who drive while taking prescribed drugs do not believe that they are a danger. We need to reinforce the message that certain prescribed drugs are regarded as creating a danger. We need to reinforce the message around certain legal drugs and we need to send out the message about illegal drugs. We have to acknowledge that there is an increased prevalence of the use of illegal drugs, a number of which impact on a person's ability to drive safely. We need to reinforce that message through schools, in drug awareness sessions, and through public awareness campaigns.
I would welcome a response to those points from the Executive and I encourage it to work in partnership with medical authorities and colleagues in the UK Government to make progress on the issue.
I congratulate Bristow Muldoon on securing time for this debate on an important topic. I also congratulate the BMA on the work that it has done in leading the campaign to highlight the influence that drugs might have on someone's driving ability. I know that the BMA has provided information on its website for people to find out more about how legal and illegal drugs might influence their ability when they are behind the wheel.
In the past 10 years or so, there has been a considerable cultural change in the way in which society perceives drink-driving, which people now think is socially unacceptable. That change has been achieved through public education and by making people aware of the amount that they can drink before getting behind the wheel. There has also been better enforcement by the police, who have run campaigns to make people more aware of the issue, particularly at the festive times of Christmas and new year. More recently, we have seen the police trying to encourage people to report people whom they suspect of drink-driving so that action may be taken. We have now moved the whole campaign on to trying to inform people that if they have had a lot to drink the night before, they should not drive the next morning.
To a large extent, the influence of illegal drugs and medication has been left behind. There has not been the same level of education about the impact that they might have on people's ability to drive and about how their functioning might be impaired. The BMA provides statistics that highlight the number of people who are on normal medication that can be bought over the counter at a pharmacy but which will probably impair their ability to drive because it has a sedative effect. Many people are unaware of the issue and, although a label might say, "This mixture may make you drowsy," will not equate that with its influencing their ability to drive.
When those statistics are coupled with the number of people who have been taking illegal drugs, which the BMA has highlighted, we can see the extent of the problem. I suspect that a large number of the public are ignorant of the influence that legal and illegal drugs might have on their ability. I hope that, in tackling the problem, we take on the BMA's two suggestions. First, there should be greater public information about the effect that legal and illegal drugs might have on people's functioning. We could also provide a mechanism that the police could use at roadside checks to detect more effectively those who might have drugs in their system.
Secondly, the pharmaceutical companies are stakeholders, and we should try to engage them in the issue with regard to legal drugs. In recent years, there have been changes in the information provided to those who purchase medicines over the counter. An attempt has been made to make such information more explicit and simple to understand. Saying that a mixture might make someone drowsy does not equate with an instruction not to drive. Perhaps the information on medicines should be much more explicit. We should encourage pharmaceutical companies to take a much more responsible role in educating the public about the dangers of legal drugs that might have an effect on their driving.
I hope that the minister will address some of those issues. He will have cross-party support for doing so. A number of practical measures to improve public education and to bring in the pharmaceutical companies could be taken in the short term. In the medium term, we should address the issue through a device that the police could use for better detection.
I, too, congratulate Bristow Muldoon on securing this important debate on drugs and driving. I agree with most of what Mr Matheson said, which seems to be becoming a bit of a habit. It is well known that many drug addicts, such as cocaine and crack addicts, use cough medicine to bring themselves down if no temazepam or diazepam is available. That underlines the point that Mr Matheson made.
It is unwise to drive after taking mood or behaviour-altering substances, just as it is unwise to drive when tired. That said, it is difficult to estimate the effect of driving after using drugs—I use that phrase intentionally—as opposed to driving under the influence of alcohol. Driving after using drugs is a highly complex and grey area. Although there is a surfeit of statistics, many of them are of dubious reliability and uncertain usefulness and there is a lack of research. Driving after the use of drugs is not as simple and straightforward an issue as driving after the use of alcohol.
Different drugs have different effects. Some prescription or medicinal drugs are more likely to impair driving ability than illegal drugs are. Antidepressants, antihistamines, painkillers, benzodiazepines and cough medicine all have a sedative effect and can produce drowsiness. According to scientific research, those drugs have a greater adverse impact on driving skills than cannabis, heroin and methadone. Indeed, it has been argued that, in limited doses, amphetamines can actually increase alertness and improve driving ability.
The difficulty in assessing the impact of drugs on driving ability is compounded by the fact that drugs are often used in combination with alcohol, as I said in my intervention in Mr Muldoon's speech. It can also be difficult to judge whether medicinal drugs, rather than the illness for which they are being taken, are responsible for impairing driving ability.
Blood and urine samples are unreliable because traces of cannabis remain in blood and urine for up to 30 days, although that does not mean that driving ability is impaired for all that time, whereas cocaine and heroin remain in the blood for only two or three days.
All those points, together with the lack of data and research, make it difficult to define safe and unsafe usage levels for drugs as opposed to alcohol. Dosage and duration of effect are crucial in estimating whether there is an increased risk of accidents. I agree with the BMA and with Mr Muldoon that we need data and research that is far clearer and more conclusive before we can develop accurate methods, tests and equipment for identifying drug-impaired driving.
I also agree with Bristow Muldoon and the BMA that we must increase awareness of the potential problem of using drugs and driving. Medicine leaflets that are usually left unread in medicine packets are not enough. General practitioners and pharmacists have a central role to play in alerting patients to the dangers of drugs and driving when they issue prescriptions or sell drugs across the counter. I hope that the minister will take on board that point in particular.
Television adverts, such as those of the Scottish Road Safety Campaign, are important. The minister might be able to tell us whether he has evaluated the campaign that started in May and what the results are. We were told that an evaluation was being carried out in the autumn.
The voluntary sector also has a crucial role. Organisations such as Crew 2000 that are active in the rave and club scene have an important role to play. We must encourage them to play that role, as they deal with the age group that is most likely to use drugs and among whom the prevalence of drug use is highest. We must try to alert those who attend clubs to the dangers of using drugs and driving—especially at weekends, when recreational drugs are most used.
I have heard little with which I could possibly disagree. Michael Matheson was correct to highlight the significant cultural change that has taken place over the past 20 years. Drinking and driving is no longer seen as acceptable. Twenty years ago, it was considered to be in the pattern of behaviour for people to take their car to a public house half a mile away, where they could consume copious quantities of alcohol before driving home.
People do not do that nowadays for a number of reasons. First, improved enforcement facilities are now available to the police. Secondly, the education process has been a success and people now recognise the evils of drink-driving. The challenge is basically to ensure that the message is passed on.
It is quite clear to me that those who seek solace in the white powder rather than in the amber nectar are prepared to take the chance of driving while impaired. Why do they do so? Michael Matheson, Keith Raffan and Bristow Muldoon were correct to say that, in many instances, people do so as a result of ignorance. People can be ignorant about the effects not only of drugs that have been properly prescribed but of illegal drugs.
It may seem illogical to us sitting here that someone who would take cocaine or smoke cannabis for the purpose of feeling more relaxed or being on a high should at the same time not realise that such drugs must inevitably impair their driving. However, it is clear that many people do not recognise that.
Members will appreciate that I am not a regular clubber. However, it is clear from my observations—on those occasions when I succumb to temptation and attend clubs—that a significant number of the clients of Glasgow's nightclubs would not think for a moment of consuming alcohol and driving but would take drugs and then drive. That is a problem. We have not got the message across.
However, enforcement is difficult. The roadside tests that the police impose are probably quite unsatisfactory. Having seen those tests in action, I suspect that someone who had no drugs in their system but who was not particularly co-ordinated might find it difficult to satisfy Strathclyde's finest that they had not been using some dubious substance.
At present, there is no reliable testing device, nor is there an absolute. For drink-driving, the breathalyser and the breath-testing equipment that is produced by the Car and Medical Instrument Company Ltd—CAMIC—can give a reading of the alcohol content within a person's blood. The cut-off point is 35mg per 100ml.
However, it is quite difficult to arrive at a similar system for drugs. As Keith Raffan said, people could have traces of drugs in their bloodstream without their driving being impaired. How do we define the correlation between the amount of drugs in a person's system and the fact that the person is unfit to drive? That is a difficult and complex problem, but it must be addressed.
Brian Adam indicated that blood samples were not taken at post-mortem tests, but I understand that such samples are indeed taken and that the figures make depressing reading. It seems that a significant number of those who are killed in road accidents have illegal drugs in their system. That should concern us all.
Tonight's debate is indeed valuable, because our society overlooks the fact that drugs are as important—and perhaps gaining in importance—as alcohol in terms of their effects on people's driving. Attitudes towards drinking and driving have completely changed and it is time that we addressed taking drugs and driving.
The legal position is stated under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988:
"A person who, when driving or attempting to drive a motor vehicle on a road or other public place, is unfit to drive through drink or drugs is guilty of an offence."
There is no difference between drink and drugs in that context. The penalties are the same.
"At the very least you will be disqualified from driving for a year and be heavily fined, with the option of imprisonment. If you cause death by careless driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you can spend up to ten years in prison and have to pay an unlimited fine."
I wonder how many people are aware that that is the position with drugs, even though they might well be aware of the legal position with regard to drink-driving.
I am grateful to Irene Oldfather for obtaining figures on the incidence of drug-driving. Figures published by the UK in 2001 indicated that
"18% of people killed in road accidents had used illegal drugs."
Of course, often one should not make a distinction between illegal and legal drugs that people did not understand would impair their judgment.
"This represented a six-fold increase in the incidence of such drugs since a similar survey in the mid-1980s. There was no change in the incidence of medicinal drugs (6%) since the previous survey."
Obviously, one cannot say that it is therefore the case that people were killed because they had drugs in their system, but the statistic cannot be ignored. Other statistics obtained by Irene Oldfather showed that
"nearly 10% of drivers aged 17 to 39 have driven under the influence of illegal drugs;
cannabis is the most common drug to have been used by drug drivers;
drug driving is more prevalent among 20- to 24-year-old age group, and
driving after recreational drug use is widespread among people attending night-clubs and dance venues."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 3 December 2002; p 2433.]
Some 69 per cent of one sample of people said that they had taken cannabis during the year; of that figure, 85 per cent had driven afterwards.
The BMA website is extremely useful and it was invaluable that Michael Matheson should have highlighted it. Keith Raffan mentioned hard drugs, but the BMA website says:
"Cannabis can impair co-ordination, visual perception, tracking and vigilance."
I recognise that cannabis can impair drivers' ability to make judgments, but is it not also true that it is difficult to correlate any amount of cannabinoid in a bodily fluid with the events surrounding an accident? Cannabis and its by-products can be found in the urine 30 days after it has been taken.
I am coming to that valid point. I am just drawing attention to the fact that young people do not seem to be aware of that and think that cannabis is perfectly okay because it is not a hard drug.
I will take a description of driving from the BMA's website.
"Driving is a complex task where the driver continuously receives information, analyses it and reacts. Substances that have an influence on brain function or on mental processes involved in driving will clearly affect driving performance."
That fact cannot be avoided.
On the difficulties in detecting drugs in someone's system, I refer members to the website of the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety. The IACDTS is currently conducting a study of clinical signs of impairment in relation to drugs. It is also trying to find out how drugs can be detected in the system so that a link can be more clearly established.
I say that we do not need to do that. We need to say to young people who are out clubbing—not with Bill Aitken, because he leads a quiet life in his slippers—and who take cannabis and perhaps alcohol, as I have seen them do in Gala, then come out of the club and get into their cars, that they might well have impaired their driving ability and one day that might cost them their life.
I hope it is not too much of a diversion to mention that in relation to deaths caused by driving, people are still concerned about disparities in charges and reparation resulting from the differences in sentences for careless driving, dangerous driving and reckless driving. Many families in Scotland who have lost people have formed an association and feel a deep sense of grievance about that matter.
To pick up the point about cannabis, I feel that there is a problem, but I am not quite sure how it can be solved. As Brian Adam rightly pointed out, someone can smoke cannabis in one month and still have traces of it in their system towards the end of the next month. Some kind of reaction test that is reasonably sound in law might have to be devised and given in conjunction with other tests for drink and drugs in order to ensure that prosecutions that are brought are sound and can stand up in court.
The other point that I wish to make about drugs, and about inculcating in the population the feeling that the law will be fair to people who have taken drink and drugs ill-advisedly, is that one of the first steps that we should also take—which I suppose is up to Westminster, because it is a reserved matter—is to reduce the acceptable level of blood alcohol to 30 milligrams per litre. I think that I am correct in saying that we have one of the higher tolerances of blood alcohol in Europe. For example, in some of the northern countries any amount of blood alcohol while driving results in the loss of one's licence.
I congratulate Bristow Muldoon on bringing the issue to our attention.
I also thank Bristow Muldoon for securing the debate. The statistics on road traffic deaths that he quoted at the beginning of his speech underline the importance of the issue.
It took a long time and a wide range of complementary actions to change attitudes to drink-driving. That included incontrovertible and widely understood and recognised evidence on how alcohol impairs performance. It took educational campaigns about the dangers of drinking and driving and it took legislation to ban driving while under the influence of alcohol and the enforcement of that ban, which required a way of establishing whether drink had been taken. It will be necessary to go down that same route in order to tackle drug-driving. The legislation is in place but, as Christine Grahame said, are people aware of that?
There is increasing recognition of the dangers of drug-driving, but a lot of that centres on awareness of the dangers of driving with illegal or recreational drugs in one's system. There is much less awareness of, and much more needs to be done to recognise, the dangers of legal or prescribed drugs. There are leaflets in packets of pills, but how many people read them? There are warnings on cough medicine that it might make people drowsy and so they should not drive, but we need more visible warnings, just as we have health warnings on packets of cigarettes. Keith Raffan made a good point about encouraging general practitioners and pharmacists, when they hand over such medicines, to underline the dangers of taking them and driving.
I do not wish to erode Nora Radcliffe's time. I take the point that she makes about legal drugs, but the parliamentary answer to which I referred indicated that there had been no change in the percentage of people who were killed in road accidents and who were found to have medicinal drugs in their system—the figure was 6 per cent. In contrast, the figure for illegal drugs had increased six-fold, so the focus is still on illegal drugs.
I agree absolutely. There are two issues, which I was going to move on to. When we run information and education campaigns, we must target two groups of people: first, we must target people who use legal or prescribed drugs and second, we must target people who are on illegal drugs. Different approaches are needed.
As Christine Grahame said, the greatest danger—by a factor of goodness knows what—concerns young men and illegal drugs. By definition, young men are the risk takers. The most effective way in which to deal with that group is by changing the balance of risk. The single factor that did most to tip the balance in the anti-drink-driving campaign was the roadside blow-in-the-bag test. Finding a similar test for drugs will not be easy, for all the reasons that members have stated. The matter is not straightforward and it will need to be underpinned by better evidence-based understanding of the effects on human performance of different drugs and different combinations of drugs.
I support in particular the part of the motion that calls for a targeted effort to develop "appropriate and conclusive", portable and easily used tests for the presence of drugs in the human body and the effect that they have on driving capability. That is the single most effective thing that we could do.
I hope that I will not go over too much old ground, but in my previous life, I performed testing such as has been mentioned. The experience of being a witness in court was not easy. I would say what a person's blood Valium level was, and naturally enough, the next questions were, "What does that mean? How impaired did that mean that the driver was?" The answers were that we do not know. Such information is not available.
To those who have a great deal of confidence that 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood means that someone is drunk, I say that that is arbitrary, too, and was established on the basis of the ability of bus drivers in Manchester to park double-deckers. I do not want to run that down, but we cannot perform such tests for all the drugs that can impair people's ability to drive.
The major difference between alcohol and drugs in general is that alcohol is a very small molecule that rapidly goes round the body, as many people undoubtedly know. The molecule is not changed much—it tends to go out as alcohol as well as coming in as alcohol. That is not true of drugs.
I will return to the example of cannabis and cannabinoids. When people take cannabis, they do not take just one substance that will have a pharmacological effect. They take a range of substances that are metabolised. What has been chosen to be measured is not arbitrary; it is pharmacologically active and is called ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol—I am sure that the official report will have to speak to me afterwards about that. However, by and large, that substance is easily detected only in urine. Unless things have moved on in the past four years—they might have—detecting the substance in blood is difficult. I do not think that a roadside test for someone to blow into a bag to see whether they have taken cannabis is available and I do not think that such a test is likely.
My advice to the minister, who might have an input on what will happen at the United Kingdom level, is that we should have not only the occasional survey post mortem, but a statutory requirement to test for alcohol and a range of defined drugs.
Another matter on which we will have some difficulty is antihistamines, which definitely have an effect, but are not routinely measured post mortem because, by and large, there is no great interest in them. People either take them or they do not. People do not die because they took or did not take antihistamines, so not much work is done on that. However, a defined range will have to be produced.
My advice to the minister is that limits should be set that relate not to impairment, but to the capacity to detect the drugs with confidence without false positive results. As Robin Harper suggested, we should thereafter rely on the current roadside tests. Measurement or detection should support evidence of impairment, because measuring something in blood, urine, breath, saliva or anything else tells us only a number and what is present. It does not tell us the impairment level, which causes difficulties.
It is easy to set limits that are sensible cut-offs of the detection capacity of machines. The presence of illegal drugs in association with evidence of impairment ought to be enough to secure conviction. The situation in respect of legal drugs is much more difficult. I hope that the minister enjoys tussling with the problem—I am glad that it is not my problem to tussle with.
In lodging the motion, Bristow Muldoon has done the Parliament a favour. If I can use such a word in the context of the debate, by lodging the motion, he has stimulated an informed range of contributions about an important issue. Although many of the specific points that members raised are matters that are reserved to Westminster, the debate has given us the opportunity to air some concerns, which I hope can be reflected back to our colleagues at Westminster. The debate has also allowed us to reflect on some of the issues for which the Scottish Parliament has responsibility, such as road safety education and publicity.
One issue that has emerged clearly from the debate is that, although there may be differences between those who take medicinal drugs and those who take illegal drugs, the implications and effects are often similar. As far as the drugs that are legally prescribed for medicinal purposes are concerned, the 1992 European Community directive on the labelling of medicines requires the packaging of all medicines that affect the central nervous system to carry warnings advising patients not to drive. We recognise that recent research on over-the-counter medicines suggests that those recommendations on labelling are not universally complied with. It is clear that the Medicines Control Agency will have to give consideration to that issue.
As Keith Raffan and other members suggested, people very often do not read the recommendations on medicine labels. In our education and publicity campaigns, we need to advise people to be cautious when they are taking medicines. People need to think through the implications and work out what they have to do.
I am not sure whether Bill Aitken was referring to medicinal or illegal drugs when he said that some people take drugs and drive but would never think of drinking and driving. In a sense, it is neither here nor there whether the drugs are medicinal or illegal; we have to get the message across that people should think carefully and clearly about their actions. The use of drugs impairs a person's performance as a driver, and driving while unfit through taking drugs has long been a criminal offence. The more that we can do to prevent the problem, the better.
Firm information about the number of drug-related road accidents is not available. Many members expressed clearly the difficulties that arise in respect of testing.
If post-mortem analysis were to be done to test for drugs, that would not be an inexpensive process. I understand that, over recent years, some of the people who provide such a service have charged £300 a go. In spite of the figures that were produced by Christine Grahame, I understand that in most cases such tests produced a blank result. It is for ministers to decide whether such tests would achieve value for money. I think that that would be the case, but the minister will have to define what he wants and work on from that standpoint.
I understand what Brian Adam is getting at. Nevertheless, judgments need to be made about the commitment of resources to a process that is to some extent unreliable and unproven. That should not deter us from trying to encourage better ways of evaluation. That said, I do not want to try to minimise the problem.
A pilot for a proposed system for recording contributory factors in road accidents is currently under way. Research in Great Britain that was published in 2001 found that 18 per cent of people who had been killed in road accidents had used illegal drugs. On that basis, around 59 adults who had used illegal drugs could have been killed in road accidents in Scotland. We know that there has been an increase in that number. There is concern that 5 per cent of drivers under the age of 40 had driven after using illegal drugs.
On difficulties relating to information, I am concerned by an answer to a parliamentary question that Irene Oldfather lodged. She asked about the percentage of drivers who had been tested who had failed the voluntary physical co-ordination test. As usual, she was told that
"The information requested is not held centrally"
—which it ought to be—but I am concerned that she was also told that
"the level and manner of testing is an operational matter for Chief Constables."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 19 September 2001; p 86.]
Does that mean that there is not a standard manner of testing? If the minister cannot answer that today, perhaps he could give me an answer at some point. It concerns me that we are not even looking at similar data.
I will respond to Christine Grahame at a later date.
We know that young people are more inclined to use drugs and then drive. The problems of cannabis have been clearly highlighted.
Reference has been made to advertising. The advert that was launched in May 2002 demonstrates the techniques that are used by the police to detect drug drivers. The message is that those who drive under the influence of drugs run the real risk of being caught. Keith Raffan asked about the advert's effectiveness. That is being evaluated and we expect the evaluation to be finalised and published in the next couple of months. Initial results are broadly positive, with the highest awareness levels among 20 to 24-year-olds, which is the highest risk group. I am sure that we all await with interest what comes out of the evaluation.
The Scottish Road Safety Campaign is implementing a publicity strategy that is aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of drug-driving. A leaflet that outlines the key facts was launched in June 2001 and continues to be widely distributed. The campaign liaised closely with the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland on the development of the television advert and leaflet and is now working on the development of further publicity to complement and build on the television advertising.
We recognise the problems and the differences between drugs and alcohol. The United Kingdom Government is considering legislation on powers for testing drivers for drugs at the roadside, notwithstanding the difficulties that that involves.
Members have made many points that are worthy of comment. Bristow Muldoon has given us the opportunity to focus on an issue that is clearly not just a social concern, but a real social problem. It blights and destroys individual lives and the fabric of many families.
We will continue to work closely with our Westminster colleagues and to look at the effectiveness of our advertising and education powers. We will do anything that we can do collectively to get the message across that people who use illegal drugs should not only stop using them, but should not think of using them before driving. We should continue to reinforce the warning to those who take drugs for medicinal reasons and caution them that there could be considerable difficulties with their driving if they take certain medicines. We still have a job to do individually and collectively, but the debate has been useful.
Meeting closed at 18:24.