DUI BLOG

I see that my favorite charity is in the news again this morning:

Charity Drops ‘Misleading’

Spending Claim

Assertion that 83.6% of donations spent

on programs taken off MADD website

Toronto, Canada.  April 11 — MADD Canada has dropped its claim that 83.6 per cent of donor dollars is spent directly on its programs.

The claim – part of the charity’s pitch that annually raises $12 million – recently disappeared from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving website.

The move follows complaints from key members of the anti-drunk driving charity, and a Star probe that revealed the majority of donor money stays with paid telemarketers, door-knockers and a direct mail company.

Top volunteers have accused MADD of deceptive fundraising practices.

MADD chief executive officer Andrew Murie would not be interviewed by the Star but said in an email that the charity had updated the information as part of “our ongoing dialogue with our donors and supporters.”

For many years, MADD has been saying it spends donor money well. Fundraising pitches typically stated, “83.6 per cent of your donation is spent directly on MADD Canada programs.”

Last fall, as part of an investigation into charity in Canada, the Star analyzed internal financial documents and found that after the fundraising and administration expenses, only 19 cents of each dollar donated to MADD goes to its programs…

Actually, this type of misrepresentation by MADD has been going on for quite awhile (see last year’s post, “MADD Under Fire”).  And it is certainly not limited to Canada: MADD in the U.S. has been criticized repeatedly for its high salaries and overhead-program ratio.

(Thanks to Jeremy Campbell.)

Let’s hope MADD doesn’t hear about this… 

MOTC Proposes Tougher Law

Against Drunk Driving

Taipei, Taiwan.  April 9 –  Government authorities are seeking to toughen the law against drunk driving, proposing to punish passengers who ride with drunk drivers.

The current law stipulates that a driver whose blood-alcohol level exceeds 0.25mg per liter faces a fine ranging from NT$15,000 to NT$60,000, depending on the type of vehicle driven and the driver’s blood-alcohol content.

But a new joint proposal from the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Ministry of Traffic and Communications (MOTC) would lower the 0.25mg per liter limit to 0.15mg per liter.

The agencies also propose penalties for passengers riding with drunk drivers.

If a driver’s blood-alcohol level exceeds 0.15mg per liter, passengers in his or her vehicle face a fine ranging from NT$6,000 to NT$18,000.

I can see the wheels turning at MADD headquarters:  Why not arrest all immediate relatives of drunk drivers?  Or, at least, anyone who tries to post bail for them?  Or maybe…

I’ve posted a number of times on the problem of non-specificity of breathalyzers — that is, their inability to distinguish ethyl alcohol from thousands of other chemical compounds.  See ”When Alcohol is Not Alcohol”.  I’ve also discussed specific situations that commonly recur, including the presence of acetone on the breath of diabetics and folks on low-carbohydrate diets.  See “Drunk Driver?…or Diabetic?“ and ”Dieting Can Cause High Breathalyzer Results”.

In today’s news:

Diet Clears Drinking-Arrest Pilot

London, April 7 (BBC)  –  A pilot arrested on suspicion of being over the alcohol limit has been cleared after tests found heavy dieting had caused his breath to smell like drink.

The Virgin Atlantic employee – held at Heathrow on 31 March before a flight to New York – had failed a breathalyser.

But blood samples taken from the 47-year-old prove his blood-alcohol level was consistent with a non-drinker.

Scientists say low-carbohydrate diets can produce acetone in the body, which may fool breath test equipment.

The long-serving pilot was said to have been on a heavy diet for a long period.

Acetone is a substance produced by the body as it tries to make up the glucose absent from low-carbohydrate diets.

Wayne Jones, a professor in experimental alcohol research at the University of Linkoping in Sweden, told the BBC breathalysers can sometimes fail to distinguish acetone from drink.

“Then there’s a risk you get a false positive reading,” he said.

Of course, prosecutors in the U.S. routinely tell DUI juries that this is just another defense attorney’s smoke-and-mirrors trick.

I have mentioned that a primary problem with blood alcohol analysis is that the no two individuals are alike in their physiology and metabolism of alcohol (see, for example, “Convicting the Average Person“, “Racial Differences in the Metabolism of Alcohol” and “High Blood Alcohol — or a Zinc Deficiency?“). Further, many foreign compounds can influence attempts to measure blood alcohol levels (see, for example, “Under the Influence of….Gasoline?“, “Asthma Inhalers Can Cause High Breathalyzer Results” and “Driving Under the Influence of….Paint?“).

One of many other factors that render attempts to estimate an individual’s blood alcohol concentration at a given point in time is smoking.

A scientific study has found that cigarette smoking can influence absorption by the body of alcohol — and thus, among other things, attempts to estimate earlier blood alcohol levels when driving based upon tested levels. Johnson et al., “Cigarette Smoking and Rate of Gastric Emptying: Effect on Alcohol Absorption”, 302 British Medical Journal 20 (1991).

The researchers reported testing blood samples of a group of smokers for blood alcohol levels both after smoking and after prolonged abstinence. The result was that “areas under the venous blood alcohol concentration-time curves between zero and 30 minutes and 60 minutes and the peak blood alcohol concentrations were significantly less during the smoking period compared with the non-smoking period“. (Emphasis added) Gastric emptying was also found to be slower during the smoking evaluation.

The scientists concluded that the effect of smoking on alcohol absorption has “considerable social and medicolegal relevance”, and that the ingestion of nicotine should be taken into when dealing with alcohol metabolism.

Non-specific analysis is another problem causing breath machines to give false readings when the subject is a smoker. As I mentioned in an earlier post, “Why Breathalyzers Don’t Measure Alcohol“, breath machines are actually designed to report the presence of any compound containing the methyl group in its molecular structure, not just alcohol. They cannot distinguish the difference between alcohol and, say, acetaldehyde.

Acetaldehyde? That’s a compound produced in the liver in small amounts as a by-product in the metabolism of alcohol. Unfortunately, alcohol moving from the blood into the lungs has been found to metabolize there as well — and, thus, to produce acetaldehyde there. The amount of acetaldehyde produced in the lungs varies from person to person. However, scientists have found one interesting fact: acetaldehyde concentrations in the lungs of smokers are greater than for non-smokers — far greater. Translated: smokers are more likely to have falsely high readings on a Breathalyzer. “Origin of Breath Acetaldehyde During Ethanol Oxidation: Effect of Long-Term Cigarette Smoking”, 100 Journal of Laboratory Clinical Medicine 908.

End result: because breathalyzers can’t tell the difference between alcohol and acetaldehyde, a higher blood-alcohol reading. And if you are a smoker, a much higher reading.

So, 20 minutes after posting about the Zamboni DUI, another news story came across my desk — about a woman arrested yesterday in Alabama for riding a horse under the influence.  So much for the brief moment of reason….

A brief, shining moment of reason in the War on Drunk Driving: 

Zamboni Operator Can’t be Charged with

Drunk Driving, Judge Rules

Newark, NJ.  April 3 (AP) –  It’s not drunken driving in New Jersey if it involves a Zamboni.

A judge ruled the four-ton ice rink-grooming machines aren’t motor vehicles because they aren’t useable on highways and can’t carry passengers.

Zamboni operator John Peragallo had been charged with drunken driving in 2005 after a fellow employee at the Mennen Sports Arena in Morristown told police the machine was speeding and nearly crashed into the boards…

Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Joseph D’Onofrio said no decision had been made on whether to appeal.

Where was this common sense when they convicted folks for DUI on wheelchairs,  lawnmowers, horses – and even a foot-high toy bike?  (See “Stretching the Language of DUI Laws”.)

Yesterday I discussed the problem of chemical compounds on the breath which are falsely reported as ethyl alcohol by breathalyzers.  Diabetics, for example, have elevated levels of acetones on their breath when hypoglycemic.  Unfortunately, they also exhibit false symptoms of intoxication — as today’s news demonstrates:

Mistaken for Drunk, Mr. Universe is Arrested

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.  April 3 (AP)  – The reigning Mr. Universe faces assault and resisting arrest charges following a run-in with police who mistakenly believed the diabetic bodybuilder was intoxicated.

Doug Burns, 43, was sprayed with Mace and wrestled to the ground by officers who were summoned to a movie theater Sunday night by a security guard, authorities said.

Burns, who was trying a new diabetes drug that night, said Monday he was preparing to see a film when he felt dizziness and poor vision — a sign of low blood sugar — and hurried to a snack counter.

The security guard noticed Burns’ strange behavior and asked him to leave, thinking he was intoxicated, Redwood City Police Capt. Chris Cessina said.

When officers arrived, Burns allegedly lunged at one of them, pushing him to the ground with both hands, and took a fighting stance, Cessina said. Burns continued being combative until four officers wrestled him down, the captain said.

During the scuffle, the officers did not notice Burns’ Medic Alert bracelet. An on-scene medical test later confirmed that Burns had low blood sugar during the incident, Cessina said…

Setting aside the question of whether you believe a diabetic weakened by hypoglycemia would assault four cops for no reason, this is another example of a commonly-encountered phenomena in DUI arrests.  See “Drunk Driver?…or Diabetic?” and “The Diabetic DUI”.

But it’s not really a problem, right?  I mean, how many diabetics falsely charged with DUI can there be out there?  From the American Diabetes Association:

There are 20.8 million children and adults in the United States, or 7% of the population, who have diabetes. While an estimated 14.6 million have been diagnosed, unfortunately, 6.2 million people (or nearly one-third) are unaware that they have the disease…

As I’ve railed repeatedly in the past, breath testing machines are inaccurate and unreliable for a wide number of reasons.  (See "How Breathalyzers Work – and Why They Don’t").  One of these reasons is that they are non-specific for alcohol.  Consider this recent news story:

Diet Driving: Low-Calorie Diet

Produces False Positives for Alcohol

Swedish researchers have discovered that a low-calorie diet can register a false positive on certain in-car ignition interlock devices that disable a vehicle if alcohol is detected on one’s breath.

The anomaly was discovered when a non-drinking airplane pilot reported the incident. Turns out the man was on a very restrictive diet that had him losing weight rapidly, which is what may have caused the false reading. As reported in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, motorists on very low-calorie diets may release certain ketones that could be converted into a secondary alcohol known as isopropanol.

Police officials point out that false positives are eliminated in the field as breathalyzer tests are used in conjunction with secondary tests that focus on the type of alcohol and other factors. No citation for drunk driving would be issued in those situations. However, if you have one of these interlock devices on your car, your low-cal diet could spell the demise of your travel plans.

And "police officials" don’t know what they are talking about.  Most "breathalyzers" have the same problem as ignition interlock devices: they are non-specific for ethyl alcohol — that is, they can’t distinguish between ethyl alcohol and thousands of other chemical compounds, among them ketones.  See my earlier posts, "Why Breathalyzers Don’t Measure Alcohol" and "Dieting Can Cause High Breathalyzer Results".

The same problem is commonly encountered with diabetics, who have elevated levels of ketones on their breath when they are hypoglycemic.  See "Drunk Driver?…or Diabetic?" and "The Diabetic DUI".

(Thanks to Troy McKinney.)

From the arsenal in the War on Drunk Driving:

‘DUI Wolf-Pack’ Releases Results of Hunt

Pinellas County, Florida. - Deputies with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department “DUI Wolf-Pack” released results from the weekend’s “You Drink and Drive, You Lose” campaign.

Deputies from the Sheriff’s Office Traffic Enforcement Unit, and K-9 Unit, were looking for alcohol and drug impaired drivers…

You drink and drive, you lose….a leg.