Potential Penalties For Driving High In Ontario

Hello thanks for joining me today. I want to pose a question that a lot of clients ask me, Mike what are the penalties for drug impaired driving? What are the penalties for driving high, if you will in Ontario? And that’s an important question. So first of all, impaired by alcohol or impaired by drug, that particular charge basically carries the same penalties in a criminal courtroom. So for example, if the there’s a drug recognition evaluator and you’re pulled over they do road side drug recognition test. You know one leg test balance, horizontal gaze nystagmus test which I go over in a different video, and when they find that you might be high, they bring you back for drug recognition evaluation and low and behold you’re impaired.

You’re facing a mandatory minimum if convicted or found guilty $1,000 Fine plus 30% Victim fine surcharge in court. That’s the minimum. Probably going to go up from there, by the way, a mandatory minimum of one year driving prohibition. It could be up to three years, and a lot of judges are imposing higher now it’s not easy to get the minimums anymore. So that’s the same as impaired driving.

There’s also now what are called per se limits for THC, Cannabis that is, for opiates for psilocybin for magic mushrooms. You name it all the opiates and heroin, what not. There’s regulations for that, but I find the police are not they’re not really set up to take that blood from you, as well. We’re not seeing many of those cases in the province. Most people that are charged impaired by drug is through a drug recognition evaluator, and we can often defend those cases.

So that in a nutshell driving high per se is if you’re found guilty is similar, in fact, identical to impaired by alcohol in terms of the offences. And also the Ministry of Transportation, it’s important to note they’re going to take your license right at the roadside. The police once they charge you you’re going to lose it for 90 days, you’re going to have a fine, your vehicle is going to be impounded for a number of days right away. You may have to take a mandatory education program for drugs and alcohol as well. So it’s very serious penalties. Again, the police aren’t quite set up now to take blood just yet but we’re not seeing many of those per se limits, but there’s many charges with which we defend that and it’s getting more serious in the province with no question and quite properly so per a deterrent effect that we are giving out very harsh penalties for drug impaired driving.