Babor and Caetano (35) have commented that inclusion of drinking and driving in estimates of hazardous use, and consequently abuse, inflate the combined prevalence of abuse/dependence. We note this to be the case, however, it appears to be less of a concern with DSM-5 which excludes individuals endorsing a single criterion from a diagnosis of AUDs. As regards DSM-IV, while our analyses also demonstrate that drinking and driving inflates estimates of alcohol abuse (which appears to not be the case for Mewton and colleagues (19)), we are hesitant to remove it from our operational definition of DSM-IV abuse as DSM-IV criteria do include drinking and driving as an element of hazardous use. Thus, we opt for the approach outlined by Babor and Caetano (36) and report the prevalence of hazardous use separately.
