Drivers find way to beat breathalyser

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 6

Drivers find way to beat breathalyser

NZPA Sydney Hundreds of young Australian drivers are cutting back on alcohol but using more marijuana to beat random breath tests, says a confidential study. The police confirmed today that drivers “high” on marijuana would not register as such on breathalysers, and were beating police efforts to catch drinking drivers. The study, commissioned by the Bureau of Crime Statistics, shows that a growing number of young people are getting “stoned” on drugs then driving because they know they can not be caught. The report says that at the root of the problem is the lack of any easy way of measuring the quantity of drugs a person has consumed.

The private researchers who did the study said that many young people had told of friends who could not even stand up because of the effects of the drugs, but still drove. They had asserted that in some instances the drivers could do nothing but sit and giggle when pulled over by the police, but were not booked because they had passed the breathalyser test. People interviewed during the study said that young people originally opposed to drugs were using marijuana to escape detection. A police spokesman confirmed that drivers under the influence of drugs such as marijuana were beating the breath tests — in some instances even when a policeman suspected that drugs might have been taken.

“The difficulty is to prove what a driver has got in him and it’s also a case of degrees,” he said. “We don’t let someone go if it is obvious that a person can't drive. The officer would try to find out what’s going on or call in detectives if he suspected someone was badly affected by drugs. “But if a bloke is sitting there and laughing, that doesn’t mean he or she’s on drugs — I’d probably be happy, too, if I had passed a breath test.” Reports yesterday said that the New South Wales Road Safety Committee had already investigated ways of testing the level of drugs in drivers. The only accurate assessments can now be made only costly and cumbersome blood or saliva tests.