Alcohol Intoxication and Its Medicolegal Aspects

Key points

• • Ethanol depresses the brain, and as the blood level rises it causes loss of judgement, slurred speech, unsteadiness, and finally stupor and coma.
• • It is absorbed from the stomach and gut, spread through the body water, and mostly broken down in the liver at a fairly steady rate.
• • Because judgement and reaction time are impaired, most countries set a legal blood-alcohol limit for driving.
• • The smell of drink, the behaviour, and laboratory testing of blood, breath or urine are used to prove intoxication.
• • In forensic work, alcohol is important in road deaths, assaults, and in the way it interacts with other drugs and poisons.