Los Angeles DUI Attorney: Smoking Raises Breathalyzer Results

 Los Angeles DUI attorney Lawrence Taylor, author of the legal textbook Drunk Driving Defense, claims that smokers arrested for DUI may have false high results from breathalyzer tests.
Breath machines don't actually measure alcohol, Taylor says. They are actually designed to detect any compound containing the methyl group in its molecular structure and to assume that it is alcohol. They cannot distinguish the difference between alcohol and, among many other compounds, acetaldehyde.
Acetaldehyde is produced in the liver in small amounts as a by-product in the metabolism of alcohol. Unfortunately, the DUI lawyer says, alcohol moving from the blood into the lungs has been found to metabolize there as well. And scientists have found that acetaldehyde concentrations in the lungs of smokers are greater than for non-smokers - far greater. Translated: smokers arrested for DUI 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.
The Los Angeles DUI lawyer points to another scientific study that found cigarette smoking can influence absorption by the body of alcohol -- and thus attempts to estimate earlier blood alcohol levels when driving based upon levels when tested. Johnson et al., "Cigarette Smoking and Rate of Gastric Emptying: Effect on Alcohol Absorption", 302 British Medical Journal 20.
The researchers reported testing blood samples of a group of smokers 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."
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 account when dealing with legal issues involving alcohol metabolism. In other words, Taylor says, attempts to estimate blood-alcohol levels of a DUI defendant when driving are highly unreliable.


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