Forensic doctors in Romania are trying to shed some light, as much as possible, through the details of the ordinance regarding the suspension of drivers’ driving licenses, until the drug tests are completed. And if the proposed regulation is approved, Romania could have thresholds for the consumption of drugs while driving, as there are for alcohol.
Many medicines, food and even water contain substances that can test positive for drugs
Psychiatrist Gabriel Diaconu, advisor to Minister Alexandru Rafila, is of the opinion that the initiative of forensic experts from the Superior Council of Forensic Medicine is commendable but… there is still a long way to go.
“The legal threshold, from which the judge pronounces against influence, is something required by the legislator, through an interpretation of the Bucharest Court of Appeal and then a decision of the Constitutional Court, which put a sign of equality between presence and influence in list of standards. Basically, the legislator asked the specialists to express themselves regarding this vulnerability in the law. And in the absence of clear rules, for the legislator, presence equals influence. Which is not right”the specialist believes.
Advisor in the Ministry of Health: “A welcome but naive proposal”
Coroners believe that drugged drivers who are still able to drive should be given a lighter sentence. The Superior Council of Forensic Medicine maintains that the exact condition of the driver must be established: if a prohibited substance is present in his body and if, thus, his ability to drive has been affected. Moreover, the Council proposes to set lighter penalties for those who only break certain limits and still have the ability to drive. But the project for drug consumption thresholds is an extremely complex one, experts believe.
“What the Superior Council of Forensic Medicine decided represents a long way (and which is not mandatory to be achieved) of rewriting certain rules in terms of aspects related to the traffic code, but also in terms of the scale, vis-a-vis and the regime of certain violations of the traffic code, some of contraventional nature, but others of criminal nature. For this, the legislator cannot decide on his own, because it exceeds the executive responsibility, and that means that, vis-à-vis these things, the Parliament must decide”, explains Dr. Gabriel Diaconu.
“The legal thresholds, if you use the alcohol model, for certain categories of substances are difficult or even impossible to determine. Having said that, the substantive initiative of the CSML is commendable, even if it is touched by some naivety. It would be desirable, but it is a matter that in other countries has not been regulated at the level of detection thresholds, but at the level of margins in relation to the time elapsed since consumption and respectively certain areas of concentration, and the legislator has shown leniency in in relation to the effect of that substance in a certain population, starting from the reality of some population studies done in those countries”.
The psychiatrist also warns of a problem: the standard of detection. “We are talking about the laboratory threshold, not legal. As technology has evolved, the detection threshold has dropped greatly. Devices these days are very, very specific. This means that they ended up detecting very small concentrations of a certain substance, on the order of nanograms. These devices are able to detect chemical compounds at the level of molecular structure, drugs, some chemicals that are in the category of substances considered psychoactive down to the order of nanograms. Because the moment the laboratory detects a substance as being present in the blood, in a concentration of say 10 nanograms, it may be that what the machine detects is actually just a food residue or a residue in the drinking water “.
All these things are to be regulated, the authorities promise, but the change will not happen overnight. It takes time, being in the middle a complex and cumbersome procedure.
And Cătalin Țone, anti-drug expert, stated that there will be many difficulties that the authorities will face in order for this project to become a reality. “They do not make a concrete proposal even in the conclusions, but they refer, in the content of the material, to some notions that we knew and are natural. For example, the definition of what people under the influence of drugs means, i.e. having impaired physical and mental capacities, reduced ability to think and reason, and also there are other definitions, such as lower limit of effect, threshold of risk and detection limit. I think these are good but will be very difficult to establish. We are not discussing blood alcohol levels, we are talking about many complex active substances, drug cocktails, and it will be very difficult to establish these thresholds”.
Ordinance with scandal
The government adopted, on July 18, the rules for applying the emergency ordinance regarding the suspension of the driver’s license until the drug tests are completed, the spokesman of the Executive, Mihai Constantin, announced at the Victoria Palace. The government decision completes the package of regulations regarding road traffic safety, he stated, during a press conference. The decision establishes the way of organizing the activities at the level of the Romanian Police and the medico-legal institutions in order to comply with the 72-hour deadline provided for in GEO 97/2024, adopted last week.
At the same time, at the level of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Interior, a commission will be established that will establish the medico-legal institutions that carry out toxicological analyses, the regional police units and the program to ensure permanence on days off. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, with the support of the Ministry of Health, will develop an IT platform dedicated to communication between the medico-legal institutions and the Police units. Through this platform, the results of the toxicological analyzes will be made available to the Police units.
