Could you be "0" alochol when stopped, drink listerine, be tested as DUI?

Question

If you tried to mask oder from last nights drink by drinking listerine after you are pulled over, could the blood test show .106 , four hours later when your blood was taken when you were actually not DUI at the time of driving?

Answer 1

If you use listerine or other alcohol based mouth washes just before you take the breathalyzer it will read higher because of the alcohol in your mouth. That's why they usually make you wait for a while, to avoid false positives. And drinking listerine in any amount will likely spike your blood alcohol, it contains quite a high percentage. And it's not that good for you either. But blood alcohol levels will not show high four hours later unless there's still that much alcohol in your system.

Answer 2

I dont think it would show up 4 hours later...or not that much anyway. And dont drink Listerine! It can enhance the alcohol in your system by 4 times.

Answer 3

Yes. From what I've seen on Mythbusters, using mouthwash causes the breathalyzer to spike to a dangerous level if you use it right before you blow into the hose.

Answer 4

It depends how much you drank.  The trick was to spit out the mouthwash, not drink it, BTW.

Suppose you are an a 170lb male.  Statistically, this means 60% of your weight is water.  That's 102 lbs of water.  And a pint is a pound, for water anyways. So, 102 pints = 1632oz (102*16).  And a BAC of 0.106% means there was 1.73oz alcohol (1632 * 0.106 / 100) in the bloodstream.  And since listerene is about 27% ABV, that means the person would have needed to drink 6.5oz of Listerene.  But, since this was 4 hours later and not immediately after it was drank, we need to account for this.  On average, a person removes 0.025% BAC per hour.  So, let's just add that back.  Then the BAC was 0.206% after the Listerene was consumed.  This would be 3.37oz alcohol, or 12.5oz Listerene.

You can play around with numbers if you like.  If you want to change the weight to say, 150lbs, then just take all the numbers you are interested in and multiply by 150/170.  If you want to change to female, assume 50% water weight instead of 60%, or multiply all the numbers by 50/60 in addition to changing the weight.

So, with that analysis, if you were pulled over and had a BAC of 0.106 four hours afterwards, you would have had to consume an ungodly amount of Listerene in order to do that.  12oz of Listerene will not go down easy.  It's not a small swig of it.  I don't think most people would be able to do that unless they usually drink mouthwash.  It's pretty harsh stuff.

Check this out, though.  Suppose someone, perhaps a 170lb male, had a 0.106% BAC four hours after being pulled over and they drank some quantity of Listerene at that time.  I'm wondering what the maximum amount of Listerene they could have drank would be to not show up DUI.  So, to net show DUI the target BAC needs to be 0.079%.  This is a difference of 0.027%.  From above, I get this to be 1.65oz of Listerene.  

What does this mean:  If the person whose BAC was 0.106 four hours after being pulled over had drank Listerene then a) they would have needed to drink 12.5oz of Listerene for that to account for their entire BAC, b) If they drank more than 1.65oz of Listerene this is what made them DUI -- had they drank no Listerene, the blood test would have showed up at a maximum of 0.079 and they would not have a DUI charge.

Answer 5

Most mouthwashes have alcochol it in.  Why would you drink more?

Yes, if you drank enough, you could still be over the limit.  For every drink (4 oz wine, 12 oz beer, 1 oz hard stuff) you had, you need one hour to come out of your system.  More or less.....