Sorbitol

[Healer555]

I was going to use nicotine gum to quit smoking but it contains sorbitil. Will that cause a positive alcohol test? Thank you. 

[Bugsandlola22, BSN]

Honestly, it is possible that it could show up.  There's a good chance that it wouldn't but it's not worth the headache

[Steven Thompson]

No, it will not. Sorbitol, like Mannitol (used in the Medical field) is a sugar alcohol or polyol. Humans have sorbitol in our bodies naturally. The end product of sorbitol is carbon dioxide. Until about 7 years ago, menthol, sorbitol, other sugar alcohols could occasionally......keyword....occasionally trigger a false positive for Ethanol in breathalyzer tests because the tests could not distinguish different types of alcohols. These tests basically no longer held up in court cases and now, basically all breathalyzer can distinguish between ethanol (beer,liquor, wine) From polyols (sorbitol, mannitol, naturally occurring sugar carbohydrates),

Your question asked about a false positive alcohol test. Alcohol test means many things...blood, urine, hair, nail, etc and you didn't specify WHICH kind of alcohol test.  The answer is still NO for all tests. Urine alcohol tests are primarily looking for 2 major metabolites other then ethanol and that is ETG and ETS. Sorbitol does NOT produce these 2 metabolites. A blood test other than checking for obvious ethanol (which is not the same as Sorbitol) also/sometimes checks for Phosphatidylethanol (PETH). The PETH biomarker is NOT produced by Sorbitol. 

In hair alcohol tests, these are largely not reliable and don't hold up well but they are looking primarily for ETG metabolite which are NOT produced/not a metabolites of Sorbitol.

The answer is absolutely and 100 percent NO, regardless of the alcohol test type as it relates to Sorbitol.