The Identification of Alcohol Intoxication by Police

BACKGROUND: The identification of alcohol intoxication by police, bartenders, social hosts, and potential passengers is an important issue in the prevention of alcohol-related driving accidents. This study examines the ability of police officers to correctly identify and make ratings of the sobriety of target drinkers presented on video. METHODS: Raters were asked to determine (1) whether the target drinker had been drinking alcohol, (2) whether it was "okay" to serve the target another drink, and (3) whether the target drinker was "okay" to drive. A rater confidence score for each target evaluated, as well as demographic characteristics about the raters, was obtained. RESULTS: Drinkers were accurately targeted to low (0.08-0.09%), medium (0.11-0.13%), and high (0.15-0.16%) blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) by using a method previously described. At lower BACs, most police officers were unable to identify whether or not targets had been drinking. Raters were "pretty sure" that targets in the 0.15-0.16% range had been drinking and "not sure" whether or not they should be served another drink or drive a car. CONCLUSIONS: The ability of raters to reliably identify target drinkers who were too intoxicated to drive safely was not obtained until the BACs were relatively high. These results suggest that prevention measures must focus on improving behavioral observations made of potential drunk drivers. Implications for bartenders and social hosts are discussed.     

Smoking and Intoxication after Alcohol Challenge in Women and Men: Genetic Influences

In an earlier analysis, men and women who were current or former smokers were found to report feeling less intoxicated on average than nonsmokers after ingestion of a challenge dose of alcohol. Here, we examine whether differences in subjective response to alcohol and a tendency to smoke cigarettes are transmitted together in families; and, if so, whether this association might be entirely explained by the same heritable factors that influence alcohol intake (as we might expect if both smoking and subjective intoxication are influenced by some general susceptibility for substance use). Alcohol challenge data on 388 Australian male and female twins (194 complete pairs) were reanalyzed using multivariate genetic analysis to evaluate the association between cigarette smoking and self-report intoxication after a standard dose of alcohol. In women, we could not reject the hypothesis of complete genetic overlap between effects on intoxication rating and history of smoking, and a significant residual genetic correlation between smoking and postalcohol intoxication persisted even when genetic influences on alcohol consumption were controlled for. In men, the familial association seemed to be largely environmentally mediated and associated with differences in drinking history. These findings prompt the question of whether, in some individuals, cigarette smoking may contribute to the development of tolerance to the effects of alcohol.     

Catching the Alcohol Buzz: An Examination of the Latent Factor Structure of Subjective Intoxication

Background:  The goal of this study was to examine the latent structure among measures of alcohol-induced subjective feelings of intoxication from a behavioral pharmacology perspective.
Methods:  Data on subjective intoxication, measured concomitantly by the Subjective High Assessment Scale, Biphasic Alcohol Effect Scale, and the Short Version of the Profile of Mood States, were collected at 3 levels of breath alcohol concentration during an alcohol administration study in a sample of heavy drinkers ( n  = 135).
Results:  Results of exploratory factor analyses supported a 3-factor model which captured the following dimensions of subjective intoxication: (1) stimulation and other pleasant effects, (2) sedative and unpleasant effects, and (3) alleviation of tension and negative mood. The tension-reduction factor was most consistently associated with more frequent drinking and alcohol problems in this sample.
Conclusions:  These findings support the notion that the neuropharmacological and behavioral effects of alcohol are multifaceted and cannot be simply defined as either positive or negative. Rather, moderate levels of intoxication appear to have concomitant dimensions of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. This study also suggests that factor scores may be useful in future alcohol administration studies to reduce the number of comparisons and perhaps increase statistical power to detect meaningful effects.     

Alcohol and Fatal Injury: The Use of Routinely Collected Fatality Data in Community Prevention Evaluation

BACKGROUND: This study analyzed patterns of alcohol involvement among coroners' cases (which typically include blood alcohol content information) to develop a method for weighting death-certificate cases (which typically do not include blood alcohol content information) for likelihood of alcohol involvement for purposes of alcohol-involved injury intervention evaluation. METHODS: The coroners' data analyzed here were collected from four California communities and correspond to all injury coroner cases between 1987 and 1996 in those communities. The death-certificate data were provided by the State of California, Department of Health Services, and correspond to all injury deaths occurring in that state between 1980 and 1996. Each injury fatality in the death-certificate data was assigned a probability of alcohol involvement based upon the coroners' data. These were then summed to provide an estimate of, or "surrogate measure" for, the total number of alcohol-involved fatal injuries per 10,000 California residents aggregated across the state of California by month for the period from January 1980 to 1990. As a test of this estimate, we examined its responsiveness to an intervention designed to reduce alcohol-involved injuries which was implemented in California in 1990 using a time series analysis technique (ARIMA) that corrects for serial autocorrelation typically found in time ordered data. RESULTS: This analysis found an effect during the postintervention period (p = 0.046). An alternative model testing for intervention effects on all injury fatalities did not find an effect. CONCLUSIONS: This surrogate measure seems responsive to intervention effects and may provide a useful tool for interventions designed to reduce alcohol-involved injuries.