If the health risks posed by alcohol and cannabis were to be judged without bias, one would have to seriously consider the legality of alcohol considering the toll it takes on lives around the world, according to CADA board member Dr Joseph Froncioni.

“If objectively you looked at the harms between alcohol and cannabis, you’d have to rethink which one is legal and which one is not — definitely,” he told Hamilton Rotarians gathered at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club.

“[Alcohol] seems to have been around for twelve or thirteen thousand years — a long, long time — and we do have a long-term attachment to it,” said Dr Froncioni, “not necessarily for its ‘high’, but as a good form of nutrition in its form in those days, which was a soupy, cloudy porridge.”

With yesterday marking the start of Alcohol Awareness Month across the world, Dr Froncioni provided Rotarians with a stark view of the dangers alcohol poses around the world and in Bermuda, while reiterating previous calls for government to begin tackling in earnest the Island’s proclivity for drink-driving.

Dr Froncioni also said that CADA is working with police in an attempt to begin enforcing laws set out in the Road Traffic Amendment Act 1997 which he said no government thus far has implemented due to “administrative and budgetary lack of foresight”.

Urging leaders to adapt “tried and tested policies” that curb alcohol abuse in other countries and apply them to Bermuda, Dr Froncioni said that the number of persons drinking and driving in Bermuda might be vastly underestimated.

“This is a law that gives police permission to demand samples of blood, urine, or other body fluids when they suspect you are impaired.

“The spirit of that law — the reason that law was enacted — was to be used in cases when a breathalyser test was impossible or impractical, so we’re talking emergency room, we’re talking patients who can’t do a test because they’ve been injured, and that’s our biggest population of drinkers and drivers — the ones who end up in the emergency room.

“It’s just not happening, and when you combine that with the lack of roadside sobriety checks, we probably are grossly underestimating the prevalence of drinking and driving in Bermuda.”