There’s a magic sobriety drug that cancels out all effects of alcohol.
On going to a party, the person reaches blood alcohol level of 2X whatever the legal definition of “drunk driving” is in your district. (For fun, let’s say .5 where the person is still driving but should be dead.)
They get pulled over by a cop.
Medically, the person** can** prove that they can’t possibly have any effects from alcohol from the drug, but it still passes through their system normally, thus resulting in the high blood alcohol level.
My question: is this person immune from a “drunk driving” prosecution?
Naltrexone does NOT “cancel out all effects of alcohol”. Many people confuse it with Narcan/naloxone, which also does not cancel out all effects of alcohol. Narcan, however, temporarily “cancels out” effects of opioids, but tends to have a much shorter half life than many drugs it “cancels out”, so you’d better be ready with a second dose.
Naltrexone blunts the *cravings *for alcohol, but you’ll still get drunk, and still be impaired.
Anyway, back to the question: no, legally, you’re still breaking the law by driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit, whether or not you are impaired.
I’m not assuming anything. I’m saying that legally they impaired if their blood alcohol content is above the limit. At least in juristrictions where it is a strict liability (I think that’s the term) like it is over here.
Morally/ethically I do not think there should be a problem if they are in fact not impaired due to your super wonder drug. As there would be no danger, there should be no problem. But that doesn’t stop the law being what it is, as like all strict laws it can be made peverse by reality.
But now I see that your super wonder drug is actually naltrexone. What the hell? That won’t stop any drunkeness at all.
Your OP, as I understand it, has the person still having a high BAC. Therefore no, it is not a defence, at least in the places I am familiar with drink driving law. If your BAC is over the limit then you are a drunk driver for the purposes of the law. Even if you are a terrible driver when sober yet some alcohol turns you into superman.
That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case everywhere. It would not surprise me at all if there are some places where the drink drive limit just signifies a rebuttable assumption of impairment.
Your OP as I understand it was focussed on the legal aspect and thus my position is closest to “No”. Although as I say morally/ethically there is nothing wrong with driving with any amount of alcohol in your blood if you are under the influence of this wonder drug which doesn’t exist.
I’m not medically trained. At least 50% of my knowledge happens to be about opioid agonists and antagonists, and naltrexone happens to be one…
If there were such a pill, and it really worked, then, in due course, the legislatures would allow it to be used in conjunction with alcohol. They’d redefine “driving under the influence.”
(It might take an appeals court ruling to make this happen; someone might prove that he was perfectly competent to drive, and the “intent of the legislation” would be used to show that blood-alcohol-levels are not what the legislature wanted to ban, but, instead, unsafe driving.)
There would be a few instances in injustice early on, and then the legal system would adapt.
Until then, no, the magic pill is not a working legal defense, in states where impairment is defined by blood-alcohol limits.
(Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the legislature made such a pill mandatory before driving, for anyone who’s had as much as one beer in the last 24 hours!)
Your question can’t be answered without knowing what jurisdiction the events take place in.
Canada has two drunk driving offences: driving while impaired, and driving with a blood alcohol level over .08. The magic pill may be a defence to the first offence, but wouldn’t be a defence to the second offence.
If a police officer tests you and you blow over the legal limit, you will be charged, super-pill or not. It’s not the police’s job to consider a defence like that; it’s for you to raise it in court, in response to the charge.
Superhal, you seem to be really wanting to not be convicted of DUI under current law if this super pill exists. Has a naughty evil twin of Superhal been caught over the limit and wants to argue that something or other means they weren’t impaired?
In the US, this comes down to the difference between common law and per se definitions of intoxication. The per se limit in all 50 states is .08 BAC. You can theoretically maintain the dexterity to pass any field sobriety test imaginable yet still be found guilty of DWI if you submit to and fail a chemical test. Common law prosecution is dependent on the testimony of the arresting officer. They have specific training to observe drivers for indicators of intoxication and administer established field sobriety tests to confirm their suspicions. Under common law, even if you refuse a chemical test and provide no physical evidence to be used against you, you can still be found guilty of driving while intoxicated based on the testimony of the arresting officer.
So, if your magic pill existed, you theoretically could still be charged with DWI if you submitted to a chemical test unless the state charging you had repealed their per se BAC limit law. However, since chemical tests are usually performed only after field sobriety tests have been administered and failed, in most cases you would be free to go. You would still be in a shitload of trouble in the event of an accident resulting in serious injury, in which case chemical testing is usually mandated by law.
Even if such a magic drug existed, it would need to be tested for in order to convince the courts that the alcohol had no effect. I hope you don’t expect the courts to take your word for it that you took the proper dose of the drug at the proper amount of time after (before?) drinking the alcohol!
It might be tested in the consideration of its affect on per se BAC limit laws and whether or not they were still just, but I don’t see why it would have to be tested at all. We currently base our prosecution almost exclusively on failure of field sobriety tests. These are tests of dexterity that have been deemed by the courts to be accurate indicators of whether or not a driver is able to safely operate a motor vehicle. If the magic pill negated the effects of alcohol consumption to the point where one could pass those tests, what is your argument that the driver is still intoxicated?
They might! If it could be proven – to the court’s satisfaction – that the pill really and damn well truly did work, then the level of blood alcohol would no longer be relevant, and the courts would eventually take that into account. So should the legislature, but they might be reluctant to take a position that would anger MADD and other activist groups. When the legislature lags too far behind changing times, the courts sometimes fill the gap.
“The courts are the interface between law and reality.”
