LIM & CO, WILLY
DUI Issues for Women
Because of several physiological reasons, a woman will feel the effects of alcohol more than a man, even if they are the same size. There is also increasing evidence that women are more susceptible to alcohol’s damaging effects than are men. Below are explanations of why men and women process alcohol differently.
Ability to dilute alcohol
Women have less body water (52% for the average woman v. 61% for the average man). This means that a man’s body will automatically dilute the alcohol more than a woman’s body, even if the two people weigh the same amount.
Ability to metabolize alcohol
Women have less dehydrogenase, a liver enzyme that breaks down alcohol, than men. So a woman’s body will break down alcohol more slowly than a man’s.
Hormonal factors
Premenstrual hormonal changes cause intoxication to set in faster during the days right before a woman gets her period. Birth control pills or other medication with estrogen will slow down the rate at which alcohol is eliminated from the body.
Women are more susceptible to long-term alcohol-induced damage. Women who are heavy drinkers are at greater risk of liver disease, damage to the pancreas and high blood pressure than male heavy drinkers. Proportionately more alcoholic women die from cirrhosis than do alcoholic men.
It does not help that field sobriety testing and chemical testing are not developed for women. Breath testing machines are not designed to accurately test a woman’s blood alcohol level. The breathalyzer was designed for an average man’s lung capacity, which is obviously much different than that of a woman’s. This causes the breathalyzer to read at a higher level, making the test inaccurate in determining a woman’s blood alcohol level. More importantly, police officers are not trained to assess women for DUI as they are with men. Since women process and respond to alcohol differently than do men, it is much more difficult for an officer, even one with many arrests under his belt, to judge the intoxication level of a woman.
