More than 10,000 drivers have been banned from the road for taking drugs since March 2015 – including seven teenagers too young to hold a full licence.
At least 23 are disqualified after killing someone while driving under the influence of substances including cocaine and cannabis.
Previously unreleased figures from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency show that 10,731 drivers are disqualified after being caught intoxicated through drugs at the wheel.
That’s the equivalent of about 86 convicted every week or 12 a day.
Christopher Backhouse from Scarborough in North Yorkshire had ‘near fatal’ levels of ecstasy in his body
They include seven aged 15 and 16 who have been banned before they can even sit their driving tests.
But it isn’t only teenagers being caught drug-driving. Twenty-three pensioners have also been disqualified after failing drug tests, with the eldest caught by police being a 76-year-old man. The statistics have emerged after the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed half of motorists are testing positive for banned substances when stopped by officers on suspicion of drug-driving.
Previous police figures suggested fewer than 8,000 motorists have been caught on drugs since the introduction of ‘drugalyser’ testing kits two years ago.
The most recent statistics from 35 of the 43 forces had showed that 7,796 were arrested between March 2015 and April 2016.
But the DVLA data released under freedom of information laws shows the number of people being banned for drug-driving is almost a third higher. It is the first time that national statistics have been released showing the scale of the problem.
They show that drivers in their late twenties are the worst offenders, with 26 being the most common age that a male driver is disqualified for drug-driving and 28 for women.
The surge in arrests follows the introduction of testing kits that use a saliva swab to detect up to 17 illegal drugs.
Christopher Backhouse, left, was 130 times over the drug-driving limit when he crashed a car and killed his close friend. He is pictured here with father and Tory councillor Andrew Backhouse
Cocaine and cannabis, the most commonly abused drugs, can now be detected by DrugWipe devices in ten minutes.
But campaigners say scores of drug-drivers are still slipping through the net as the proportion of offenders being stopped by police and tested at the roadside fell by a fifth this year.
The number of dedicated road policing officers has almost halved since 2000, which means there have been 10,000 fewer drink and drugs tests compared with last year. There are also concerns at some of the lenient sentences being handed out, even when the driver has killed someone. In January, police urged the courts to send a stronger message to drug-drivers after a woman who killed a motorcyclist was spared jail.
Laura Ward, 30, was given a suspended jail term after admitting causing the death of Aiden Platt, 20, by careless driving while unfit through drugs. Judge Geoffrey Mercer, QC, told her that she should not have been driving but he would not send her to prison because she was the single mother of a five-month-old son.
Yesterday Jason Wakeford, from Brake, the road safety charity, said: ‘These are truly shocking figures which illuminate the sheer scale of the menace of drug-driving.
‘Sentences simply have to get tougher to send out a clear message that getting behind the wheels under the influence of drugs will not be tolerated.’ A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman said: ‘These statistics are understandably alarming, but we are seeing such an increase because there have been huge improvements in the way forces detect this type of offending.
‘Changes to drug-driving legislation in 2015, followed by the introduction of the DrugWipe test, means that officers are now successfully catching greater numbers.’