#153 Murgon Drug Driving

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Murgon Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Drug Driving. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.

All right, today I'm at Murgon Magistrates Court. It's about an hour inland of Gympie, so about three and a half hours north west of Brisbane. Client was charged with drug driving. There's two types of drug driving. The more serious is what's called under the influence of a drug, meaning you're high on drugs. The lesser charge is known as did drive whilst relevant drug present, meaning you've consumed it at some point, the effects have worn off, you're no longer high, so you're effectively sober, for want of a better word, but there's traces of it still in your system. And in Queensland, it is an offence to have any trace of any illicit substance in your system.

So basically, he was intercepted in a car and he did do a breath test, which came up as zero. But he also was given a drug swab that came up as positive and they found methylamphetamine in his system. So basically, the worst case is a nine month loss of licence. As I said, he was in a car, not a truck. Worst case is a nine month loss of licence, mandatory minimum is one month. He was eligible to apply for a drug driving work licence, given he hadn't lost his licence for any reason in the last five years. He was the holder of an open Queensland licence and he satisfied a number of other prerequisites, which I won't get into now. However, for his own reasons, he chose not to apply. When you're an employed person, one of the things you need to provide to the magistrate when applying for a drug driving work licence is an employer from your affidavit, stating that you will lose your job if you lose your licence. But again, for whatever reason, he didn't want to take that course.

So my job was one of getting the disqualification down as low as possible. I requested he complete a reformatory course which could be done online. I asked him to get character references based on a template we provide all of our clients. I got my instructions off him prior to today, prepared my submissions prior to today. Drove up last night, met him at court this morning, we grabbed a conference room, I ran through my submissions, the procedure, what he could expect the magistrate to say, the prosecutor say, myself to say, obviously it's not scripted. I don't know what's going to come out of their mouths, but there's certain, I guess, themes that continue on from matter to matter and rather than my client going in blind and it all being new to them as it unfolds, I like to just give my client a bit of a background as to what to expect. So again, it's not all new and there's no sort of deer in the headlights going on, or at least I try to minimise that the best I can.

We went in, I guided the magistrate through my client's background, work history, family situation, difficulties he'll suffer while he's off the road, why we're not applying for a work licence, but the fact that notwithstanding it would be severe if he was to get a lengthy disqualification. Ultimately I was successful and persuaded the magistrate to give the management minimum one month, so my client got a one month qualification, modest fine. No work licence because he was choosing not to apply. So he's off the road for a month. As I said, the maximum is nine months. One month disqualification, he's taken a month's leave, which is good. And the leave ends a few days after the one month, which I was able to secure for him. At the end of the month, he just goes and renews his licence and he's back on the road in time for resuming work at the end of his leave period.

Client's obviously very happy. I'm Andrew Wiseman at Murgon Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.