Ketamine Driving Solicitors

Drug Driving & Ketamine

The ketamine limit is 20µg/L, set under Section 5A of the Road Traffic Act. The prosecution doesn’t have to prove you were impaired. They don’t even have to prove your driving was affected at all. They only have to show you were driving with Ketamine in your system above the legal limit.

You only need a low limit for the presence of ketamine to be charged, but that also makes results challengeable, because with concentrations that small, even a minor lab error could mean the difference between being charged and released.

Will Ketamine Affect Your Driving?

Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic. It’s used in human and veterinary medicine mostly, but it also used recreationally for its sedative of “out of body” effects.

Any effects depend on the dose you take, your tolerance and whether you’ve got any other drugs or alcohol in your system when you take it. In higher doses, ketamine can significantly impair your driving by slowing your reactions, changing your perception of time and distance and reduce your coordination.

At lower doses, you might not feel like you’re impaired, but you could still be over the limit.

How Long Does Ketamine Stay In Your System?

Ketamine can clear your system relatively quickly compared to some other controlled drugs. Its half life (how a drug’s elimination from your system is measured) is recorded at about 2.5 to 3 hours, meaning blood level falls pretty quickly after use.

But that detection window in blood can be around 24 hours depending on your dose, how often you use and the sensitivity of the test.

One average, traces of ketamine can still be detected in your system:

• 2-4 days in your urine
• Up to 90 days in hair
• 7-14 days in a blood test

Too many factors mean it’s hard - if not impossible - to say how long it’ll last in your system because other factors like your weight and metabolism can all impact the result as well.

This is why it’s not just about whether ketamine was present. It’s whether the reading is accurate, obtained lawfully and above the limit at the time of the test that counts.

Did your roadside test flag a drug?

Police roadside swab kits screen for cannabis and cocaine. Not ketamine.

So ketamine charges usually come from something else. Whether that’s a field impairment test at the roadside, sight or smell of something, an admission from you or a failed swab for another drug that leads to an arrest and an evidentiary blood test at a police station.

Whatever started a case against you for driving over the ketamine limit, the evidence is typically just a blood test. And that’s only as reliable as the procedure when taking it.

How We Win Ketamine Drug Driving Cases

Ketamine is present in the blood in minute quantities. So it’s a difficult substance to analyse accurately. This means there’s opportunity for your defence.

Here are the main ways we examine a ketamine drug driving defence:

Has an analytical reduction been applied?

Police rely on a complex, technical method of analysis to identify and measure drugs in your blood. The method is considered the “gold standard”, but mistakes are still made.

To get around human error or other testing problems, labs deduct a percentage from the final test result, a “normal analytical variation”, which basically covers if its wrong.

By law you can check the accuracy of the process and the CPS must supply the analytical data pack.

Calibration mistakes

Testing equipment in labs need to be calibrated at the start of each day. This involves analysing a number of solutions containing a different known drug concentration, which must fall within a range recommended by UKAS.

In previous cases it’s been known for calibrations to not have complied, which means equipment wasn’t calibrated to the right margin, which could incorrectly put you over the limit.

Sample storage and degradation

Once a blood sample is taken it can remain in storage for weeks, even months, before it’s analysed. Police storage facilities can be over-used and badly maintained, which isn’t a good environment for storage evidential blood samples.

We can challenge how your sample has been stored as part of reviewing the process of your case.

False positives

False positives do happen, whether it’s come from labelling errors, lack of training or just human mistakes. We’ve had cases dismissed in the past down to issues like this, for example one case was dropped because a blood sample was incorrectly labelled.

Dealing with cases involving medical or prescribed ketamine

Ketamine does have legitimate medical uses and is used more in supervised clinical settings. If ketamine was given to you as part of any medical treatment, you should raise this with us.

There is a statutory medical defence you can use in some drug driving cases if you weren’t impaired and any drug was taken in accordance with medical advice. Whether this applies depends on your specific case, but is something we can review.

Get in touch with our drug driving experts

M.A.J. Law are a team of specialist driving defence solicitors. We offer everyone free and independent initial advice so you at least understand your options. If you would like to know about your drug driving case, get in touch. You can fill in the contact form below for a call back.