Toxicology Services – Change for Independent Opinion Service Requests for Alcohol Cases

Effective Immediately With the changes in impaired driving legislation that came into effect on December 18th, 2018, certain types of alcohol opinion letter requests will no longer be accepted. Section 320.31(4) of the Criminal Code now gives the court the ability to perform estimations of blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) when a breath or blood sample was taken more than two hours after the person ceased operating a conveyance.

NFLS Toxicology Services will no longer accept requests for estimations of BAC in Impaired Driving by Alcohol Cases where the offence date is on or after December 18th, 2018 and the results of a breath or forensic laboratory blood test reveal a BAC of 80 mg% or greater. Toxicology Services will continue to accept requests for estimations of BAC in situations where:

• The results of a breath or forensic laboratory blood test reveal a BAC below 80 mg%, or

• The estimate is based on hospital results, or

• The estimate is based on serum or plasma alcohol results.