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NEWS: The AGE - 24/06/07 'Prescription drugs to be new road toll aim'

lil angel15

lil angel15

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Prescription drugs to be new road toll aim
Jason Dowling
June 24, 2007

PRESCRIPTION drugs are the new target in the war on the road toll. Senior traffic police and road trauma experts want booze buses testing for Valium as well as vodka, benzodiazepines as well as beer.

Research by The Alfred hospital showed a likely link between legally prescribed drugs and road crashes, and nearly one in six crash victims taken to The Alfred had a benzodiazepine in their system.

Police are developing ways to test for benzodiazepines, such as Valium, because of the evidence of an over-representation of tranquillisers in the blood of crash victims.

Tomorrow a Victorian parliamentary committee examining the misuse of benzodiazepines will hold public hearings.

VicRoads and the TAC will be questioned on the effect of prescription drugs on driver behaviour, and the risk of accidents. Police will also brief the committee.

The head of the parliamentary drugs and crime prevention committee, Judy Maddigan, said the use of benzodiazepines by drivers was a key focus of the committee's work.

She said the issue of benzodiazepines and driving was one that had been neglected, and described the figures from The Alfred research as alarming.

"They should arise a certain amount of concern in people's minds," she said.

The committee will report by November, and the Government will have six months to respond.

A professor of emergency medicine at The Alfred, Peter Cameron, predicts that laws will be strengthened to curb benzodiazepine use by drivers.

Professor Cameron was the joint author of a recent Alfred hospital study, reported by The Age, which showed almost one in six road accident victims taken to The Alfred had taken a benzodiazepine.

It was inevitable that driving laws governing the use of prescription drugs would tighten, he warned.

Inspector Martin Boorman, of the traffic drug and alcohol section, said police were developing the equipment to test for the drugs.
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The AGE
 
If you test a dead victim of a MVA the Benzo metabolites will be present if they had a Valium up to six days ago. I think this committee's work is a touch flawed, if they were to bring in this sort of testing it would discriminate against people with mental health issues. In the last twenty years mental health professionals have been working towards removing mental health discrimination all this will do is make law to discriminate.

What would you rather; a driver with a Valium in their system or a driver without who could have a unpreditable episode at anytime?
 
An interesting point regarding presently available swab tests is that while most companies make a benzodiazepine test, afaik no company has been able to produce one that is both reliable and sensitive enough. Some industries are employing swab testing as an alternative to the more 'personally invasive' urine tests. This has been a noted difficulty as benzos are so commonly used.
 
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