Dr. David Sack - E! Online
May 25, 2010
Can Lindsay Lohan Scam Her SCRAM Bracelet?
You forget that, in that shopworn fashion parlance, Lohan has "rocked" such a bracelet before. Even posed with it in a bikini—possibly while sober. Apparently, this time around, Lohan's SCRAM bracelet—Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor—will be lighter and, presumably, easier to bear. As for tricking the SCRAM so that Lohan can get her party on, well, there have been rumors...
...of addicts trying to beat the little device, which measures alcohol intake via a person's sweat. At first, it seems impossible; SCRAM has sensors on it to record any attempts at cutting off the bracelet or otherwise tampering with it, and it also sends signals to a SCRAM center that expects regular updates of a sober nature, or else. But back in '07, when Lohan first got strapped with a SCRAM, the Daily News crowed that it had the bracelet all figured out.
"Probation officers familiar with the clunky accessory say it's amazingly simple to fool the device," the paper insisted. "‘One way is to stick your foot in a tub of ice water. The ice bath prevents you from sweating, so there's nothing to record, and it doesn't activate a tamper alarm, either," an officer told the Daily News.
The paper also said that people can try—no joke—sticking "some baloney (or most other cold cuts) between the unit's sensor and the wearer, creating a skin-like barrier that doesn't sweat."
However, defense lawyers and addiction counselors tell me that, if either of those tricks worked in the past, they sure don't now, at least, not with the hundreds of clients they've worked with.
"If you put anything in between the skin and the SCRAM, it alerts the SCRAM center," says celebrity DUI attorney Jon Bryant Artz, adding that he has never had a client successfully "trick" the bracelet. "I've had clients try to put a sock under the SCRAM; it doesn't work." (Dr. David Sack of Promises, the addiction treatment center in Malibu, agrees, saying, "At the end of the day, it is nearly impossible for someone to beat the bracelet.")
In fact, the bracelet is so sensitive that Lohan is more likely to deal with a false positive than the other way around, experts tell me. "There was a case in Florida of a woman who used hairspray and it triggered the SCRAM," criminal defense attorney Elizabeth Kelley tells me. Then again, Kelley says, the SCRAM people are pretty good about owning up to any flaws in the bracelets.
Now, as for how the wardrobe department of her new
Linda Lovelace biopic will handle the bracelet, that's another
matter altogether...
- http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/ask_the_answer_bitch/b182713_can_lindsay_lohan_scam_her_scram.html