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Asked by david7 to Susana, Sam, Ed, Dave, Ben on 24 Jun 2013.
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Sam Horrell answered on 24 Jun 2013:
There isn’t a simple test like a breathaliser for drugs but according to my brother (who is a police officer) you can tell if a person is driving under drugs by their eyes. They will have dialated pupils which give them away. If the police suspect this they can arrest a person and then prove it with a drug test. Usually their urine.
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Benjamin Hall answered on 24 Jun 2013:
About 95% of alcohol is processed by the liver but the rest is removed from your body by other means. One of these ways is through your breath. Your lungs are an excellent gas exchange surface (it’s what they’re for) and some of the alcohol simply evaporates from your blood and into your lungs. You then breathe it out. The breathalyzer test is an estimate for blood alcohol content.
Other drugs, I imagine, do not exit the body in the same way as alcohol.
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David Briggs answered on 24 Jun 2013:
At the moment the police test the urine of people they suspect of having taken drugs – however – I scientists are working on a breathalyser for marijuana and cocaine, and I think they have shown that it is possible…
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Susana Teixeira answered on 27 Jun 2013:
It exists for other drugs now, not that long ago it was announced that researchers in Sweden developed one. It is not yet officially used anywhere I believe, it is quite recent and the burocracy of laws can be much slower than Science 😉
Alcohol exits the lungs because it is in your bloodstream and is rather volatile (evaporates), so it easily exchanges in your lungs into the air you breathe out. Which is handy, cause it helps our body clear it away!
With drugs it was not so intuitive that they could escape the same way, but it turns out they are present in tiny drops (an aerosol) that form normally from liquid in your lungs when you exhale, and these can be detected by a breathaliser.
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