NSW clamps down on drug driving

Drug drivers who don't think they will get caught, eventually will be, is the message of a new anti-drug driving campaign for NSW.

NSW government, police and the Centre For Road Safety have announced a mobile drug testing to be rolled out across the state from Tuesday.

"With mobile drug testing there's more of it and eventually you will get caught," Centre for Road Safety executive director Bernard Carlon said.

Police plan to do 97,000 tests a year by 2017.

"More exposure, more equipment, more officers trained to deliver the test," Assistant Commissioner John Hartley said.

The test is a road-side swab of the tongue which takes a couple of minutes.

If drugs are detected, the driver is disqualified from driving for 24 hours.

The person is not charged until the swab is tested twice more in laboratories to confirm the result.

A focus of the campaign is regional NSW, which is responsible for 70 per cent of the drug-driving-related deaths last year.

In a trial over the weekend across Queanbeyan, Albury, Tweed Heads and Byron Bay, 150 out of 850 drivers tested positive for drugs.

Mr Carlon said most drug drivers knew what they did was illegal but still believed they could get away with it.

"We know that more than 40 per cent don't think that drug driving affects their skills and we know more than half think that they're not going to get caught," he said.

"So we've got news for them."