The local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is applauding the province for its plan to introduce new penalties for drug-impaired drivers.
It comes as recreational marijuana is set to be legalized next July.
The province will increase all monetary fines and suspensions for all impaired driving offences and will have zero tolerance for youth aged 21 and under, novice drivers and all commercial drivers in Ontario.
Local MADD representative Chaouki Hamka says the penalities should be help curb impaired by marijuana driving.
"We believe it will have the same benefits for cannabis and impaired driving among youth and the carriers as well as it did with alcohol."
Hamka says right now police need to have the tools on how to detect marijuana in a driver's system.
"There are prototypes of machines that can detect certain drugs in the system but those have not been implemented yet, we know there is siliva testing that is suppose to come out which will give police another tool."
He says MADD welcomes the new legislation.
"We have new commercials that are mixing alcohol and weed and we talk a lot about how marijuana impairs your ability to operate a motorized vehicle and whether it is alcohol or marijuana, they are both drugs."
The Ontario government plans to sell marijuana in as many as 150 dedicated stores run by the province's liquor control board.
Story contribution by Peter Langille.