Proposed cannabis-driving changes risk more road trauma, surgeons warn

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) has warned against proposed changes to medicinal cannabis driving laws announced this month by the NSW Government — RACS saying in a statement that the proposed changes risk increasing road trauma, “because there is no scientific means of measuring cannabis impairment”.

The changes weaken enforcement of a known cause of driver impairment while relying on a threshold that science cannot validate, said Dr Danette Wright, Chair of the NSW State Committee of the RACS, and Dr Vikram Puttaswamy, RACS NSW State Trauma Committee Chair.

“Every week, surgeons across NSW operate on people whose lives have been changed in an instant by a crash,” Puttaswamy said. “Road trauma is largely preventable, and any change to impairment laws has to be judged against that reality. On the current evidence, these changes do not pass that test.”

RACS said that registered medicinal cannabis users who test positive at the roadside but fall below a maximum THC threshold on laboratory testing will no longer be automatically penalised under the proposed framework. Those above the threshold would receive two warnings before a third detection within two years attracts a $704 fine and a three-month licence suspension.

“The Committee acknowledges the genuine difficulty faced by patients on lawfully prescribed medicines who also need to drive, particularly in regional communities. Its concern is not directed at patients, but at whether the framework can be reconciled with road safety,” the statement read.

There is poor correspondence between THC levels in blood or saliva and driving-related impairment, RACS said, which is unlike alcohol, where concentration supports valid inferences about impairment.

“THC-induced impairment can persist long after measured levels have declined, and the correlation between concentration and impairment is weakest in regular users; the group most likely to be using medicinal cannabis. A regulatory threshold therefore cannot, on present science, reliably distinguish an impaired driver from an unimpaired one,” RACS said, citing Current Addiction Reports 2026 by Metrik et al.

“The Committee asks that the government defer the proposed changes while it invests in research into validated measures of cannabis impairment. It also recommends government support for affected patients directly through prescriber counselling and transport-access measures, so that patients’ needs are met without compromising road safety.”

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