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Everyone knows if you drink you shouldn't drive, but occasionally people do have a glass of wine at dinner or a beer at a hockey game. How do you know if you are legally able to drive a vehicle? If your blood alcohol content is .08 per cent or over you will be charged with impaired driving, lose your license for a year, face a fine, huge insurance increases and a criminal record.

Now Ontario has toughened up it's drinking and driving laws and other jurisdictions are doing the same:

• In Ontario if a driver is caught with a blood alcohol level between what was once known as the warning range of 0.05 and 0.08 they will have their license suspended for three days.
• If caught a second time in this range their license will be suspended for seven days and the driver will have to attend an alcohol education program.
• A third time means they will license suspended for 30 days and have to seek alcohol treatment and have an ignition interlock condition placed on their license for six months.

For most social drinkers the new law means you are probably fine to have one to two glasses of wine or beer over a period of an hour or two. But everyone has a different tolerance level and your weight, eating food, stress, being tired and other factors could affect your reading. Having more then one or two drinks means you may be creeping up to a range that is illegal as well as socially unacceptable. Many still believe that if you are going to drink any amount of alcohol -- you should not be driving.

Portable breathalyzers have been selling briskly in the United States for the past couple of years and are now available in Canada. Wine Kitz in Ottawa has just stocked them and other stores in the franchise may as well. They are also available online through

We looked at models from BacTrack, a California company. They sell for between $70 and $140 and can be used about 300 times before they must be recalibrated at cost of about $30. The company claims they are accurate to within .01% of the same kinds of breathalyzers police forces use.

In our test one man had 2 beers over one hour and blew .03 per cent -- well under the legal limit. Another man had 6 beers over 2 hours and blew .09 per cent -- that is over the more serious impaired warning range. He did not drive.

KEY POINTS

• The legal BAC (Blood Alcohol Level) is set by the Federal Government
• The current level is .08% or 80mgs, but many of the provinces have been lobbying to have it lowered.
• Penalties for impaired driving offences may vary from province to province
• Blood alcohol levels depend on the alcohol amount consumed in a given time, the drinker's size, gender, weight, food consumption
• These devices aren't just for drivers - for construction workers, pilots, for parents who want to know if their kids have been drinking.