WINE 'IS WORSE THAN A JOINT'

A NEWS report that one glass of wine impaired driving performance more than
a whole cannabis cigarette has angered those who took part in the
government-backed research.

The New Scientist magazine article, by Arran Frood, was based on a leaked
report from the Transport Research Laboratory. However, the lab, in
Crowthorne, Berkshire, said that the article was "full of inaccuracies",
while declining to say what they were. A TRL spokeswoman said: "Although
the testing is finished, the report the author saw was in draft form and
was not yet completed."

Mr Frood, said that the article, in the magazine's latest issue, was
"thoroughly checked and the results of the tests corroborate with previous
research on the subject."

According to the article, the TRL researchers had found that volunteers who
drank 60 per cent of the legal drink-drive limit were less able to drive in
a straight line or at a constant speed than those who had smoked a joint.
Unlike the tipsy drivers, they tended to be aware of their state and drove
cautiously to compensate, it added.

The results suggested that automatically penalising drivers with smoked
cannabis in their bodies would be credible only if a zero-tolerance policy
were adopted for drink-driving as well, New Scientist said.