Photo: © 2007 AAP/DEAN LEWINS

Following the success of lowered blood alcohol limits in Sweden, Norway and Japan, the Queensland Government too is considering dropping the legal drink-driving level from 0.05 to 0.02.

With a glass of wine served in a restaurant roughly 1.5 standard drinks, and women advised under current laws to have no more than one drink per hour, that doesn’t leave much room for a tipple.

Despite Government data showing alcohol as a factor in a fifth of all road fatalities, the proposal has been slammed by a surprisingly diverse range of critics – from peak drivers' group, the RACQ, to the Queensland Police Union.
 
"It's not those people who have had one drink who are killing people on the roads," union president Ian Leavers told the ABC.

The RACQ's Gary Fitesthe agrees, telling The Brisbane Times the Government should address "the real problem in this area which is the high-end offenders and particularly the repeat high-end offenders".

But the president of the Public Health Association of Australia says the move is not just a smart one, but an inevitable one.

"The case for 0.02 is that it sends out the message loud and clear we can no longer tolerate the carnage caused by drink-driving," Prof Mike Daube told the Herald Sun.

"We can wait forever for yet more evidence or we can decide as a nation that we need to act now."