Drivers are put in the Romberg pose – Newspaper Kommersant No. 243 (7444) of 12/29/2022

The anti-corruption examination of the draft law of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which regulates the punishment of drivers for the use of drugs that affect the ability to drive, is nearing completion. The police did not offer a list of prohibited medicines and standards for their use – apparently, the Ministry of Health will develop the list. The Ministry of Internal Affairs intends to give doctors the right to establish the fact of intoxication caused by medications, not only according to the results of tests, but also according to the clinical picture: stability in the Romberg position, clarity of speech, adequacy of behavior, hand tremor, etc. This practice was used until 2008 to establish alcohol intoxication among drivers, now it has been decided to return to it.

On December 29, the anti-corruption examination of amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (note to Article 12.8) ends, which will allow drivers to be punished (with deprivation of their rights and a fine of 30 thousand rubles) not only for the use of alcohol, drugs and psychotropic drugs, but also for those found in the urine or blood substances that are part of a number of widely used drugs.

The draft law was prepared in the wake of the November decision of the Constitutional Court (CC), which analyzed the case of one of the Russian motorists, who was deprived of his rights precisely because traces of an epilepsy drug were found in his body. Previously, the judiciary often punished citizens even for small doses of phenibut, phenazepam, antidepressants. The CC concluded that Art. 12.8 of the Code of Administrative Offenses can be read ambiguously, and obliged the State Duma to adopt clarifying amendments to the code. At the same time, courts of general jurisdiction are temporarily prohibited from punishing drugs found in the body that are not equivalent to psychotropic or narcotic drugs. The White House instructed the Interior Ministry to develop a relevant bill and submit it to the government in early 2023.

The police in the prepared amendments plans to oblige doctors conducting a medical examination of a driver to focus not only on the results of tests, as in the case of alcohol and drugs, but also on the clinical picture. The health worker will decide whether the driver is drunk or sober based on a comprehensive examination. The order and “features” of the medical examination will be established by the Ministry of Health, according to an explanatory note to the bill. It should be noted that the clinical signs of intoxication – fuzzy speech, redness of the face, unsteadiness when walking, hand tremors, etc. – were taken into account until 2008, then doctors began to focus only on test results. So, if two tests for alcohol content in the exhalation with an interval of 20 minutes gave a negative result, there are no claims against the driver.

Whether the list of prohibited substances and their concentration will be fixed in the legislation is not yet clear. “The issue needs additional, including interdepartmental, elaboration,” Kommersant was told in the press service of the Ministry of Health.

Taking into account the “clinic” when determining the state of intoxication is a conceptually correct and scientific approach, says narcologist Alexander Kovtun, but he warns: “In the USSR, where this technique was practiced, the qualifications of doctors were significantly higher than now, they knew exactly what specific signs could indicate about the use of certain substances.

The head of the Moscow Board of Legal Protection of Car Owners, Viktor Travin, also considers the path proposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to be “correct”, but the Ministry of Health, in his opinion, may not support this approach and even block the bill. “We need to study, in fact, all existing drugs for their effect on the ability to drive a car,” he says. “This is a gigantic job in terms of time and volume.” It is necessary to create a system for informing drivers about which drug should not be taken before driving, he noted, the existing recommendations in the instructions are not enough.

A large number of drugs, including antiviral, antipyretic and even antihistamine and other drugs, in a certain concentration can affect attention or reaction, significantly reducing them, lawyer Sergei Radko notes. “The same substance can be neutral and not cause clinical signs of intoxication, but at a higher concentration it can make a person sleepy,” adds Alexander Kovtun. “For example, from taking antihypertensive drugs, antispasmodics, and others. If the list is specific, then at least there will be uniform enforcement.”

Ivan Buranov