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Projects examining roadside drug testing devices aiming at harmonised, EU-wide regulations have long been completed (e.g. ROSITA and DRUID). Initial problems as to failures, failing sensitivity or accuracy criteria, deficits during cold and rainy weather are being increasingly overcome due to technological development.
Oral fluid screening devices are clearly favoured because of their perceived advantages in detecting recent drug use over urine, sweat or hair. Which may be bad news for fake urine handlers. Still, devices as e.g. Drug Test 5000 are expensive so poor countries might not use it just yet, or only occasionally.
The EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) link below lists a wide variety of legal consequences when tested positively – but not what devices are used where. That half the countries permit random stopping while the other half require suspicion is only small consolation as many have experienced what „preselection’ in terms of an Open Air means.
Countries differ on the tolerance issue. Some try to prove actual influence at the time of driving, which means impairment by any drug, some simply go for detection, „zero tolerance’, some have both. Punishments, as licence suspension periods, fines, and prison sentences, vary and are in part severe. Licence suspension range from a maximum of a few months in one country to a minimum of a year in others.
Fines range from a few hundred to several thousand euros, maximum prison sentences also vary from days to years. The only advice here apart from not driving is to think twice, read up and be prepared.
Overview for Europe:
– www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index19034EN.html
Information on detection times (Nachweiszeiten):
– www.alice-project.de/drogen/safer-use/nachweis/index.htm
– www.drugscouts.de/de/page/nachweiszeiten
Verhalten bei Verkehrskontrollen in Deutschland
– www.drugscouts.de/de/page
– www.eclipse-online.de/kontrolle.html
Längst werden EU-weit Instrumentarien für Verkehrskontrollen entwickelt und dabei für die geplante Ausweitung des Einsatzes Geräte zum Aufspüren in Mundflüssigkeiten favorisiert (u.a. DrugTest 5000) – was Freunde des Fremdurins ungern vernehmen dürften.
Der EMCDDA Überblick zeigt die Folgen eines positiven Tests für die EU und Norwegen. Etwa ob sich Länder auf den blossen Nachweis oder den Nachweis bestimmter Grenzen stützen, oder beides, kann hier ebenso nachgelesen werden wie die verschiedenen rechtlichen und finanziellen Folgen und deren gleichfalls unterschiedliche Bandbreite, die das haben kann.
Im Zweifel gar nicht fahren, mindestens nachdenken, nachlesen und vorbereitet sein.
