The Ministry of Health decided to toughen the rules for obtaining driver's medical certificates

The draft document on the new procedure for issuing medical documents to car owners and driver candidates was prepared by the Ministry of Health.

According to Kommersant, the document includes requirements for compulsory laboratory tests for "risk groups, which include drivers or candidate drivers with clinical signs of drug addiction".

“The study will be prescribed by drug therapists who have noticed marks of injections, as well as increased sweating, excessively low pulse rate, drowsiness or agitation, tremors of the hands,“ emotional instability ”and other clinical signs of drug addiction”, - the message says.

The Ministry of Health started talking about the introduction of a new procedure for medical examination of drivers back in 2019. Officials of the department wanted to oblige all candidates to go through expensive chronic alcoholism at their own expense. As a result, the cost of one "drug service" increased 10 times - up to 5,000 rubles. The innovation caused a storm of public outrage and huge queues at drug dispensaries. The drivers literally stormed medical facilities, trying to "slip through" the obligatory medical examination at the old price.

Against the background of the growth of social tension around the 2-draconian price, new certificates ", the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, spoke out against the project. After that, the reform was postponed until better times, and the document itself was sent for revision, and more in that edition it no longer appeared.

In the new version of the "driving" rules, the Ministry of Health has provided for a clarification of the procedure in terms of "laboratory tests that are proposed to be carried out in relation to risk groups." They decided to include drivers or candidate drivers with clinical signs of substance abuse disorders, as well as drivers who are trying to get their license back after the expiration of the revocation period.

In addition to the standard set of medical examinations, such candidates and drivers will have to undergo additional urine tests for drug content.

If, during the express analysis, traces of opiates, cannabinoids, cocaine, barbiturate and other prohibited substances are found in the candidate's biological fluids, the driver will be sent for additional laboratory tests. At the same time, the Ministry of Health offers some candidates to send a number of drivers for an in-depth analysis immediately, regardless of the result of the express test. The reason may be traces of injections on the skin, as well as the narcologist's suspicions of “inadequacy of behavior, including that accompanied by a violation of social norms,” “acceleration or deceleration of the pace of thinking,” “emotional instability,” lethargy, drowsiness or agitation, pale skin and other signs.

A wide list of "suspicious signs" proposed by the Ministry of Health was criticized by experts, who said that under such conditions, anyone can be "run around" additional laboratory tests, which is fraught with the creation of a circle of abuse, as well as the expansion of the market for "shadow certificates", which are issued without any testing.