First of all, I'm not buying it. state Senator Anthony Galluccio failed a breathalyzer test on Monday, but claimed that the failure was the result of his use of Colgate Total Whitening and Sensodyne Toothpaste. Gallucio has been under house arrest since being convicted of a hit-and-run injury accident. Part of his sentence includes not drinking and random tests for alcohol. The senator claims that his doctor said that sorbitol, an artificial sweetener used in toothpastes, mouthwashes, gum, and breath mints, can trigger false positives on breathalyzer tests.
It reminds me of Richard Pryor claiming that he didn't catch fire by freebasing. He was having his bedtime snack of milk and cookies. He said that when dunked the cookie in the milk, it blew up.
The Globe article cites an Arkansas case where a firefighter claimed that he, too, had a false positive result on a breathalyzer and blamed sorbitol.
Interesting that there are, as best as I've been able to find, no confirmed tests that indicate that casual sorbitol use can trigger a breathalyzer. Nothing at the National Institutes of Health. Nothing in the New England Journal of Medicine. Nothing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (This article, though, suggests that sorbitol might be therapeutic for cirrhotic patients.)
Sorry, Tony. Applying Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation is most often correct, it seems like your time at home is limited.
On a related matter, the headline writer at the Telegram seems to be making light of a serious proposal on a serious matter.
Rep. Lew Evangelidis from our fair 'burb, has proposed to make roads on college campuses into public ways for the purpose of enforcement of drunk driving laws. While I don't think that the proposed legislation is a good idea (expanding police jurisdiction for traffic laws onto private property), I also don't think that the use of the word tipsy to describe potentially deadly behavior is appropriate. I've buried too many friends who've died as the result of their own drunken driving or someone else's.
1 comment:
I agree with you on both topics.
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