KEY POINTS:
Police are to consider drug testing officers to ensure the public can have faith that the force remains clean.
It is also looking at implementing rehabilitation programme and a structure which would allow it to pick up staff who are abusing alcohol.
Police human resources general manager Wayne Annan said today they wanted to assure the public that police were drug-free.
"The level of drugs in New Zealand has increased significantly over the last number of years," he told National Radio.
"We recruit people from all parts of society and we want to assure ourselves that the general increase in drug use in New Zealand is not coming into (the) police."
He said police HQ had agreed with the officers' union, the Police Association, to explore which officers should be drug tested.
It is likely those subject to testing will be working in areas where the use of drugs will impair an officer's ability to do their job, such as when they are using firearms or carrying out car chases.
Figures from Environmental Science and Research (ESR) released last year showed the number of workplace tests it carries out continues to rise, reaching 24,000 in 2004/05.
That is up from a few thousand tests a year in the late-1990s. Nearly four out of every five of the tests are for pre-employment purposes. The proportion of positive returns had remained around 8 per cent, ESR said.
- NZPA, NZHERALD STAFF
