[Incidence of drugs and euphoretic agents among motorists on the roads of Denmark. A possible relationship to traffic safety].

All of the Medicolegal Committee's cases from the period 1981-1985 concerning the influence of drugs on motorized road-users were reviewed. Only cases where a drug was demonstrated in blood and/or urine were included. A total of 442 cases were included in this investigation and 100 different agents, drugs and narcotics were demonstrated. In all of the cases the two drugs most frequently demonstrated were diazepam (46%) and morphine (19%). In the 46 cases where diazepam was demonstrated alone (blood alcohol concentration = 0, a significant correlation could be demonstrated between the sum of the blood concentration of diazepam and demethyldiazepam and the degree of intoxication as estimated by the clinical examination. In 87% of the cases, the road-users were men. Cannabis users had a lower age (21 years) than the road-users who had taken diazepam (28 years) or morphine (26 years) while individuals who had taken methadon had a higher average age (29 years) than those who had taken morphine. The frequencies of accidents in cases with morphine or methadon were lower than in the material as a whole while the frequency of accidents for dextropropoxyphen was higher compared with the other opiods and the material as a whole.