Drugs & Alcohol Policy Webinar

BRIAN CALOVIC, Health Safety and Wellbeing Manager for Conundrum Holdings reports on the CMPA Drugs & Alcohol Policy Webinar.

Do you have a Drugs and Alcohol Policy?

From 1 April 2021 the Victorian Blood Alcohol Concentration limit is zero (0.00) for drivers of all vehicles greater than 4.5 tonne GVM upwards.

The CMPA held a vital 1 hour webinar to help Members develop a robust Drugs and Alcohol policy to reduce risk and associated liabilities. The webinar was attended by over 20 people geared towards owners, managers, supervisors and HSE officers who need to update their current policy or to develop a policy.

The webinar presentation was by Greg Ryan who is contracted by Road Safe Gippsland who have been funded by VicRoads/ DoT to promote the Policy Builder. He has also worked for VicRoads for 30 years on the behavioural side of things. He worked on safety infrastructure programs with VicRoads and spoke about things they have worked on referring all the way back to 1970 and the introduction of mandatory seat belts.

Greg showed some add campaigns including the “What is an acceptable number of fatalities from road trauma.” “Working towards zero fatalities.” Lots of policies have been introduced over the years. Dave McKelvie later made the point that a target zero campaign is not a realistic approach and people will not buy into it. Dave, with stats on hand compared fatalities v population size comparisons between 1970 and present making the point that there are a lot less fatalities now than the higher numbers in the past with less population.

Effect of drugs and alcohol when driving:
We were told about the effects of alcohol and drugs April 2021 zero BAC for all HV drivers was made law.
Current statistics include:
• 25% of fatal accidents feature D&A use
• 40% of these are drug related
• 25% of fatalities involve heavy vehicles

Drugs & alcohol can affect:
• Poor judgement

• Coordination
• Confidence
• Reaction times
• Perception
• Drowsiness

Types of Drugs used:
• 79% involve use of methamphetamines
• 27% involve THC (Marijuana)
• 18% involve MDMA (Ecstasy)

Drugs stay in the system for varied periods of time and have an effect on the body which can vary due to hydration, gender, type of drug, frequency of use, weight, fatigue levels.

Why and who should have a policy?
Everyone should have a D&A policy.

The VicRoads Toolkit was developed as a template that is formatted by the user answering 9 questions and based on those responses a formatted policy is created.

Some of the areas included are:
• Employer and employee responsibility.
• How to manage situations.
• Drug testing conducted y/n.
• How to determine fitness for work.
• RTW after a drug or alcohol incident.
• How do you involve the workplace in policy development.
• Consultation with employees as per OHS Act.
• Allow people to take ownership.

There is also information available on the WorkSafe website.

VicRoads website has 6 fact sheets and 8 education posters available to download and print as part of information and training for employees.

We were then directed to the ‘Build your policy now’ link. I would think like most others we did not go to the link but watched the presenter demonstrate how it works.
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/business-and-industry/
heavy-vehicle-industry/preventing-alcohol-and-drug-related-harm-on-our-roads/alcohol-and-drug-policy

The link (see page 29) takes us to what looks like a Form site form with 9 questions on how you would like to respond to drug and alcohol related management. The process was to enter company details, contact details and then respond to the nine, Y/N questions. Hit submit at the end and you have a detailed D&A policy ready to go.

Summary

Greg presented the slides and videos of the whys and how’s. Very simple to generate a policy and I see potential for CMPA guides and other policy creation documents to go this way. My issue was with the policy being very detailed, it would be a legally binding document and not everything would apply to a company’s existing practices. The policy was saved as a word document which could be edited to suit. By doing this there may be implications to the legalities of it which could require a knowledgeable person to approve the adjustments.

Overall, it is a great idea. With some company specific tweaking it would tick the box of providing information, employee consultation and reduce the “I did not know” response.

Companies that do adopt it would need to be sure they read the fine print and then commit to whatever the end product looks like.

For further information, assistance and any required workshops please contact; Greg Ryan on Mobile: 0428 549 656.
(Greg is contracted by Road Safe Gippsland who have been
funded by DOT to promote the Policy Builder.)

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