Statistically, standing with one foot on hot coals and the other in a bucket of ice makes you reasonably comfortable.

You can take a stand and work back from there with numbers to try and prove your point, but despite all that, it only takes the RBT detection of one person to potentially avoid an injury or fatality.

The odds may be very low, but of little comfort to the family of any unfortunate victims.

Antiseptic,

Good questions.

"My questions for OLOers sre these: does the small number of people using alcohol or drugs and then driving continue to justify the massive expenditure and the assault on civil liberties that roadside testing implies?"

There's no doubt that some random checking of drivers is warranted. Otherwise the roads would deteriorate to becoming the Wild West. The problem is that the majority of the driving public are inconvenienced while there are still massive gaps in the system. Seeing as though the roads are slowly turning into the Wild West anyway, it seems pretty useless and unfair overall.

"Is alcohol/drug use actually a causative factor in a large number of accidents, or is it merely a convenient scapegoat that can be used to give police more intrusive powers? Even the police only claim 2 out of 19 pedestrian deaths over the period "may" have alcohol as a "significant" factor."

I suspect it is the Police's stalking horse to get more powers. I say this because I was almost hit by a drunk driver while I was walking across a zebra crossing one evening. The reason I know he was drunk was because he stopped and raucously told me how lucky I was because he didn't see me as he was bliiiiiind. After passing his rego number along with a statement to the ACT police, nothing happened. When I chased it up, it seems the police didn't act because they lost the email I sent to their website - it smacked of real Keystone Cops stuff. Perhaps, it is feedback like mine the cops are using as a spur to try to get more powers. Maybe I should shup up in future and just live with the consequences of being hit by a drunk driver. End of story.

Big Pharma Push Bill to Drug America’s Mothers
http://www.infowars.com/government-big-pharma-push-bill-to-drug-americas-mothers/

It’s called the Melanie Blocker Stokes/MOTHERS-Act...It was killed in the Senate last year but it was reintroduced in January of this year.

Democrat-Senator/Robert.Menendez[from New/Jersey,..home to a large number of drug companies,and[Democrat]Richard Durbin are the main sponsors of the bill in the Senate(S.1375]


Brooke Shields supports the government and Big Pharma effort to convince women they need to be on dangerous psychotropic drugs.

In a March 30,2009 speech on the House floor,the original sponsor of the bill,Illinois[Democrat]Bobby.Rush claimed that“60 to 80 percent of new mothers experience symptoms of postpartum depression while the more serious condition,..postpartum psychosis,affects up to 20 percent of women who have recently given birth.”

In response to a House vote to pass the legislation..on the same day,...Rush said:“H.R.20..will finally put significant money and attention into research,screening,treatment and education for mothers suffering from this disease.”

The bill was moved to the U.S.Senate Health,Education,Labor and Pension Committee[on March 30]..where it will be“marked up”in the near future...The legislation is backed by the U.S.Senate H.E.L.P. committee,chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy,and supported by president Obama.

Evelyn Pringle,a columnist for Scoop Independent News,writes that the“true goal of the promoters of this Act is to transform women of child bearing age into life-long consumers of psychiatric treatment by screening women for a whole list of‘mood’and‘anxiety’disorders and not simply postpartum depression.”

In short,the medical industry and Big Pharma want to deem pregnancy a mental illness and prescribe dangerous psychotropic drugs.

“The Mothers Act has the net affect of reclassifying the natural process of pregnancy and birth as a mental disorder that requires the use of unproven and extremely dangerous psychotropic medications(which can also easily harm the child).

The bill was obviously written by the Big Pharma lobby and its passage into law would be considered laughable except that it is actually happening,” writes Byron Richards for NewsWithViews.

The act would mandate health care professionals indoctrinate pregnant women into mental health treatment“options”(prescribe dangerous drugs)for mild depression-like symptoms experienced during or following pregnancy.
http://www.infowars.com/mothers-act-branding-pregnancy-as-mental-illness/
http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-proposes-to-screen-and-medicate-mothers/
http://www.infowars.com/congress-drug-mothers-suffering-from-postpartum-depression/

Antiseptic,
I don't know if this is true, but I have been told that if a user rinses thier mouth with vinigar just prior to being tested for drugs that the vinigar nutralises the drug for testing purposes.

Thanks rehctub. I've heard that sucking a strong mint is effective, but I don't know the chemistry, so it's probably all just urban myth.

I wouldn't recommend either of those methods. They may have been relevant in the old, old days of crude chemical breath testing where the pH and hydrocarbon content of your breath were part of the assumptions in determining the chemistry of the test. The modern electrode-based breath testers and antibody-based drug tests are very selective, and well buffered.

Drink or whatever, but try not to drive.

one under god: Babies born to alcoholic mothers usually have fetal alcohol syndrome, junkies often have babies born dependant. Wonder how many guaranteed future customers might be born to mothers getting their first few "prophylactic" depression treatments? Are serotonin reuptake inhibitors secreted in milk? Obviously I shouldn't trouble the already paranoid, but are we paranoid enough?

Rustopher.