The hot celebrity accessory this season isn't a small dog, Marc Jacobs bag, or Jimmy Choo shoes.
It's a SCRAM bracelet, the alcohol-detection accessory that's a sobriety statement, not a fashion statement.
The bracelets were spotted on the ankles of rapper Eve, former Lost star Michelle Rodriguez, and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan after they were arrested on drunken-driving charges.
And actress Lindsay Lohan has been voluntarily wearing the bracelet - sometimes nicknamed the "dranklet" - to show her sobriety after a May drunken-driving arrest.
Instead, the technology just helped chronicle her fall off the wagon.
Touted as a tool to keep heavy drinkers sober by monitoring them 24/7, the SCRAM - or Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor - bracelet apparently wasn't enough to keep Ms. Lohan from a partying relapse. She was rearrested early Tuesday morning on charges of drunken driving and possessing a controlled substance after a car chase in a parking lot in Santa Monica, Calif.
The 21-year-old actress failed an alcohol breath test, blowing between 0.12 percent or 0.13 percent, when police stopped her at 1:35 a.m. While in jail, officers found a small amount of cocaine in her pocket. Her arrest comes just two weeks after she left a rehabilitation facility in Malibu following a DUI-related crash in Beverly Hills.
Celebrities aren't the only ones wearing bracelets with sensors that detect alcohol-spiked sweat - the pungent odor that sticks to the clothes of a drinker and trips the sensors in SCRAM.
The SCRAM has become a sobriety-maintenance tool in court-ordered rehabilitation programs of 43 states.
About 40,000 people in the United States have been tracked by SCRAM bracelets since they were introduced in 2003 by Alcohol Monitoring Systems Inc.
The monitor detects whether a person has been drinking by measuring the evaporation of alcohol from perspiration on the surface of the individual's skin, using essentially the same technology as a Breathalyzer.
The device monitors the alcohol level at least once an hour. Using wireless technology, a base station in the wearer's home downloads data from the bracelet and then transmits the data by modem to the company's field operations personnel, who furnish the information to a probation officer, counselor, or others monitoring the wearer.
In Ms. Lohan's case, that was her attorney, Blair Berk.
Ms. Berk said she monitored Ms. Lohan's bracelet regularly.
"Unfortunately, late yesterday I was informed that Lindsay had relapsed," Ms. Berk said Tuesday. "Addiction is a terrible and vicious disease."
While the device is meant to act as a deterrent, it cannot prevent people from drinking.
Data from the bracelet can only be collected when the wearer is within 30 to 50 feet of a special wireless transmitter, usually in the person's home, which means behavior cannot be constantly monitored.
Many people are ordered by the court system to wear them for 30 to 90 days, but a Texas man who killed a child in a drunken-driving incident was ordered to wear one for 10 years, a company spokesman said.
SCRAM wearers must pay the $10 to $12 daily fee.
If someone tampers with the bracelet, the action triggers an alarm to the company.
The fact that a SCRAM wearer such as Ms. Lohan was rearrested doesn't mean the device failed, said Jon Ridge, a probation official in Pennsylvania.
"It would have caught her drinking once she downloaded the information. She just didn't get that far," he said.
Reuters news service contibuted to this report.
The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Cristina Rouvalis is a staff writer at the Post-Gazette.
Contact Cristina Rouvalis at:
crouvalis@post-gazette.com
or 412-263-1410.
First Published July 26, 2007, 10:48 a.m.
