Drug driving and co-codamol

[drew.h]

I still get a lot of pain from injuries caused by a head on car crash over 3 years ago (not my fault, OAP had 2 pints and thought he was driving in Spain). Although I try and avoid pain killers, I sometimes take them if I can’t sleep. After watching TV shows were they did road side drugs tests, I was wondering if taking Co-codamol would give a positive test?

The liver converts codeine into morphine. The drive limit for morphine is 80µg/L. So how many Co-codamol 30/500 tablets would this be and how long would it stay in my blood?

For example, in a really bad evening I may take two Co-codamol 30/500 at midnight and another at 4am. When I drive to work at 8am would I be over the limit?

[drew.h]

Amused2death said:

After watching a few of the poice type progs on the tv I thought the roadside tests only indicated for cocaine and cannabis?

One of the tests is for opioids, which include cocaine and morphine.

[drew.h]

vsonix said:

Cocaine is not an opioid

Just shows you what I know. I stand corrected, road side is just cocaine and cannabis. Apparently tests carried out at the station will test for 17 different drugs.

So co-codamol shouldn't show on a road side test.

Part of my worries was I recently purchased a Golf GTi off my son (just until I can get something decent) and I have noticed a distinct difference in attitude to this car, compared to my 33 previous cars, by the police. Including being aggressively tail-gated by a traffic Volvo. So its probably only time before I'm stopped for something trivial.