Millions of Australian drivers warned as road traffic charges ‘skyrocket’

Shocking new statistics released this week show there has been an “explosion” in the number of drug-impaired drivers in Australia’s most populous state over the last decade. Authorities have stepped up enforcement, resulting in a nearly tenfold increase in court appearances.

According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR), 13,815 people were charged by police with drug-related driving offenses last year. That’s a huge increase compared to just 1,409 offenders for the same crime a decade ago, in 2014.

Authorities say the increase is largely due to police dramatically increasing the number of roadside drug tests they conduct annually: from 20,000 in 2008 to 156,000 a decade later.

That means drug offenses now make up a significant proportion of cases in local courts, and officials warn that police are also getting much better at detecting drink-driving people.

Shocking rise in drug discoveries on New South Wales streets

BOCSAR chief executive Jackie Fitzgerald said eight per cent of all people found guilty of drug driving offenses in local courts last year were there. She also noted the “real explosion” in positive detection rates, which have increased from about 2 to 3 percent to almost 10 percent in recent years.

The increase appears to be due to more effective enforcement, as research does not suggest there has been a major, corresponding increase in drug use among the New South Wales population.

“There is evidence that crime can be deterred if people feel the likelihood of arrest is high,” she told the ABC. “But even with the approximately 160,000 drug tests carried out in NSW last year, we have 6 million drivers and by far the majority are not tested in a year.”

The state average for drug driving detection last year was about 200 positive tests per 100,000 residents, with the highest rates generally in regional areas. Between 2008 and 2023, the number of drug crimes per quarter increased from an average of 102 per quarter in 2008 to 3,296 in 2023.

Cannabis has been the most commonly detected drug among criminal offenders, which has sparked controversy, particularly among medical marijuana users, about whether current sentences are fair. In this state, a driver can be charged if traces of an illegal drug are found in his system, even if he does not appear to be impaired at the time.

This means that anyone who uses illegal substances, be it medical marijuana or recreational marijuana, can face drug charges days after use while the substance is still in their system. After cannabis, amphetamines were the second most commonly detected drug among offenders, followed by cocaine and MDMA.

According to Transport for NSW, there were 1,404 crashes involving drug use between 2019 and 2024, with 372 people dying and 1,816 people injured.

NSW lawyer Tracey Randall said the laws were actually about drug use and not road safety. She said as long as a substance is detected while driving, the driver’s license can still be lost, even if it has no influence on the decision-making. “Which seems unfair,” she argued.

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