Sunday Mirror Investigates: pounds 1 PILL THAT FOOLS B-TEST

A PILL that lets drink-drivers cheat police breathalyser tests will soon be on sale in Britain.

The astonishing tablets cancel out the effects of up to SEVEN times the legal alcohol limit for driving.

That's equivalent to TEN PINTS of 3.5 per cent-strength lager or THIRTEEN GLASSES of wine in 125ml measures.

Shady East European dealers now plan to sell the pills to pub- goers so they can pass police checks despite being dangerously drunk.

The pills mask the smell of alcohol, and thanks to a mystery ingredient can also confuse sophisticated breath-test kits. But they do nothing to lessen its effect, which could have potentially fatal consequences should an over-the-limit drinker drive after taking them. Our reporter was able to sail through a breathalyser test after drinking four bottles of super-strength lager and taking two of the Russian-produced "Anti-Police" pills. He was more than three times over the legal limit.

The pills were developed 30 years ago by the KGB - the former Soviet secret service which was trying to find an "instant sober- up" pill.

Ingredients include glucose syrup, gum arabic, malt, eucalyptus and the mysterious ingredient that even our professional Russian translators were unable to source. One four-pack of the pills costs just pounds 3 - enough for one night out. Shockingly, despite the pills' frightening potential, they are not yet banned in the UK because the Russian manufacturers have not disclosed the identity of the key ingredient.

The pack has the words "Breath Control" in English and the brand name "Anti-Police" in Russian.

The manufacturers' boast that the pills "remove the presence of alcohol on breath" is also displayed in prominent red capitals.

The pills are manufactured by a company called Flaina in Moscow and imported from the Russian Federation. They come enclosed in a protective foil wrapping with a shelf-life of three years.

The instructions are listed on the back of the packet: "Take one or two tablets with each drink. After five minutes, alcohol on your breath will begin to disappear. The effects of the tablet will last for one hour or until your next drink."

In hard-drinking Russia, it is now common for motorists to swallow a whole pack of four pills during a night-long session.

Dealers first offered to import the pills for our investigators in pubs in Stratford, the hub of East London's fast-expanding Russian community.

The Russian smugglers told us they keep supplies topped up by operating shuttle-runs and by taking advantage of new cheap flights from Moscow to London.

The pills are freely available in Eastern Europe where they are sold across the counter in chemists and street-corner kiosks.

In Belgrade, Serbia, our reporter was able to buy a foil-wrapped four-pack from a chemist for pounds 3.

Hundreds of thousands of the pills were also recently discovered in Croatia, where possession is penalised with a prison sentence.

The front of the luminous yellow-coloured pack states in Russian: "Gets rid of the smell of alcohol".

And, even more astonishingly: "For a philosophy of healthy living."

Copyright 2005 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.