The huge dangers of drug driving

Drink driving is a massive problem for the police, with 7638 drivers in the UK testing positive on breathalyser tests. This is a lot of people to be posing a massive danger to other people on the road, not to mention themselves. This is something that you hear a lot about, but what of driving while under the influence of drugs?

The current figures put it at around 1 in 20 people in the UK using illegal drugs in the past month, and that probably means that a lot of these will have tried driving whilst under the influence. Most people don’t even realise that drug driving is an offence, they think that they are fine when they have taken drugs.

For example, Cannabis is a big offender, with 800,000 people a year driving whilst on it, and under the mistaken impression that they are fine. Some even think that it improves their driving ability. This is a common notion, as most people on drugs have this impression that the drugs improve them, and that they shouldn’t have any problems when it comes to driving, but they are wrong.

Drug driving comes with exactly the same dangers as drink driving, and has exactly the same penalties, such as up to 6 months in jail if found guilty, and causing death by dangerous driving whilst under the influence of drugs also gives a large jail sentence just like drink driving. Addiction treatment centers are full of reforming drug drivers who only faced their addiction when they were caught.

The rise in NHS admissions due to alcohol

Binge drinking has become a hot topic in recent years, with the Government looking at new ways to crack down on it amid a large amount of violence and disorder caused by alcohol. 24 hour drinking has been blamed as has the rise in availability and the dramatic fall in prices  of alcohol.

In 2002 there were 510,200 hospital admissions wholly attributable to alcohol, and this seems like a lot already, however in the last published statistics there were 863,300 admissions in 2008. This is after a significant increase year on year in those 6 years. That is over 350,000 MORE hospital admissions due to alcohol. This stat includes people who were drunk, alcoholics, been affected by the toxic effects of alcohol or had an alcohol related disease such as liver disease.

The most troubling statistic is the rise in alcohol dependency. 29,500 alcoholics were admitted in 2002, and this went up to 45,100 in 2008. This is a very large amount of people needing alcohol detox, but there is no guarantee that they will have allowed themselves to be helped in this way as a lot of alcoholics are in denial, and all a hospital visit amounts to is an inconvenience.

Incredibly, 4,700 of the wholly attributable admissions were under 16, which shows that it is becoming much easier for youngsters to get hold of alcohol now.

Admissions that were “partly attributable” to alcohol were up from 379,100 in 2002 to 640,700 in 2008. This included all accidents, violence and non-liver illnesses. Alcohol fuelled violence has become a massive problem and has left some city centres no-go areas for a lot of people.

The age group with the most admissions are amazingly 75 and over, which could maybe be due to their lack of tolerance to alcohol in their old age.

It will be interesting to see how much more of an increase there is when the new results are published in the next couple of months, it would be expected based on the trends of the previous 8 years that 2009 will again break the record for NHS admissions attributed to alcohol.

The Legal Drug

Right now, if you are planning to purchase or be in possession of Mephedrone in the UK you will not be breaking any laws. The main reason for this is that the Misuse of Drugs Act doesn’t have any restrictions when it comes to this drug. When discussing the sale of this drug though there are many more grey spots. According to the Medicine Act, it is considered illegal for anybody to be supplying, advertising or selling this drug for being consumed by humans. Still, there are quite a few vendors that side step this law by simply labelling the drug for research use or as food for plants and by mentioning on it that it is not to be consumed by humans.

A vendor can, though, sell this drug legally to a person as long as that person shows no desire to consume it himself/herself. If a vendor believes that you might be consuming the drug yourself, he/she will immediately stop supplying it to you. In countries like U.S.A, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Israel and Denmark it’s illegal to use or sell this drug in any capacity. But in UK the drug is not illegal and is also sold on the internet.