This may come as a surprise to many people, but most police officers are no better at determining intoxication levels in DUI suspects than any other person on the street. They have very little training in that regard for one thing, and they in fact are at a strict disadvantage for making such rulings since they are already conditioned to see signs of drunkenness in suspected DUI persons, regardless of any other conditions. On condition that has often been mistaken for drunkenness in particular is diabetes. Most people who suffer form this condition typically experience low levels of sugar in the blood or hypoglycemia. This condition manifests itself in any number of symptoms that can easily be mistaken for alcohol intoxication, among them a slowing and slurring of speech, impaired balance, decreased motor control, stumbling, sleepiness, and many others. To a police officer that is conditioned to see these symptoms as clear signs that the suspect is drunk, a ruling of drunk driver will almost surely be given. When you add to that the fact that hypoglycemia is so often the cause of driving related accidents on the road, you can begin to see how easy it is to mistake diabetics for drunk drivers.

Now you might be thinking that a breathalyzer test will be enough to determine that the driver in question is indeed diabetic and not drunk. While this would appear to be the case, the unfortunate fact is that breathalyzers are by their nature inaccurate and unreliable devices. In addition, breathalyzers do not even actually measure the level of alcohol in the breath. Instead, they use infrared light which is absorbed by any substance in the breath of the suspect, containing any of the “methyl group” substances. These substances include ethyl alcohol as well as many other chemical compounds. That is where the problem lies for diabetics. Regardless of what substances are actually present in the breath, the more infrared light is absorbed, the higher the resulting reading is. Since breathalyzers are programmed to consider whatever compounds present as alcohol, diabetics will come put positive for the presence of alcohol in their breath, whether or not they have actually had anything to drink.

There are actually many different compounds within the methyl group that can be detected as alcohol by breathalyzers-thousands in fact. Acetone is only one of these compounds, which is unfortunately a scientifically documented by-product of a hypoglycemic condition. Diabetics routinely experience a condition known as “ketoacidosis”, which results in considerable levels of acetone in the breath. As you can imagine, this can potentially result in a positive alcohol reading in a breathalyzer test, regardless of how little the subject has actually drunk-or even if he or she has not had any alcohol at all. When you consider the fact that one out of every seven drivers in the Untied States are diabetic, the possibility of potentially skewed breathalyzer results becomes all the more real.