Breath and blood tests

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 16

Breath and blood tests

Sir, —“Pointed” asserts that the present congestion in hospitals is not due to liquor. This is an entirely irrational statement. Actually it is due to a combination of alcohol and reckless driving, apart from the odd “sheer bad luck” case. I base my views on articles written by people qualified to express these views, and they are indisputable. My own experience, gained over 500,000 miles of driving for a living, also enters into it. 1 am definitely not “antibooze.” I drink, in company for preference, but alternatively, a drink or two alone. I would reassure “Pointed” that the police State he dreads is not yet apparent, and that discipline is very necessary for certain drivers. I would refer “Pointed” to a report in “The Press" of September 15, of a meeting of the council of the Medical Association of New Zealand—a scathing indictment in which they consider that the number of accidents, 600 killed, 25,000 injured, could be halved if the problem of the intoxicated motorist could be overcome.— Yours, etc.,

W.T.F. September 18, 1970.

Sir, —Calculated and uncalculated indifference and the blind eye to this problem are the powerful obstacles to progress. The alternative, restrictions, such as leaving the car at home during the pleasurable drinking hours and leaving the drink alone during driving hours, hits at the freedoms to amass profits for brewers, oil companies, panelbeaters, undertakers, and the dividends of shareholders in the respective fields. Is it selfishness or compassion which moves the doctors to speak out 20 years late? Mass thinking makes little allowance for the wellbeing of the heart and soul of our nation; and this is perfectly understandable if one accepts the method of the structure of our society.— Yours, etc., LUCKY; NO CAR. September 18, 1970.

Sir, —Those of us for whom this issue is a reality find arguments about police States beside the point. When one is faced with a couple of ambulance-loads of battered people, sometimes dead, the result of a road accident, and when the driver involved appears to be drunk, one feels that by ordering a bloodalcohol test knowing that it might be used in evidence to

cancel his licence, one may i in fact be practising worthi while preventive medicine. The medico-legal subtleties, i by which venepuncture of a i patient so drunk he cannot ' feel the needle is labelled assault, escape me. High blood ; alcohols are implicated in i over half of road accidents in 1 which the driver suffers a head injury or is killed; and ■ whether ms passengers or ’ those he runs into are sober does not make them immune ■ to injury. It would seem that [ infringement of the personal • liberties of those who drive , when drunk might be prefer- ; able to the maiming of the i persons they drive into.— Yours, etc., CASUALTY HOUSE SURGEON. ! September 18. 1970.