She told the officer she hadn’t had a single drink, but the officer demanded a mandatory breath test. If mandatory screening is ever struck down as unconstitutional, it’s cases like Thompson’s that will probably do it. The Edmonton checkstop program went from 2,220 breath tests in the year before mandatory screening to 10,445 tests in the year after. Calgary police have conducted a whopping 15,600 breath tests under mandatory screening, though a spokesperson couldn’t give a baseline for how many they conducted previously. Until more data is available, it’s too soon to say how mandatory screening has affected this.

Source: National Post February 28, 2020 17:36 UTC