Drugs and traffic police will work in tandem on an experiment to detect drivers under the influence of narcotics on the streets of Moscow, a government daily reported on Tuesday.
According to Rossiiskaya Gazeta, both departments will experiment with a drug tester in one of Moscow's districts before making recommendations of using the device throughout Russia.
A driver suspected of being under the influence of narcotics will be asked to spit into the device and then wait 15 minutes until the indicator shows a positive or negative result on the use of drugs.
A leading narcotics specialist from the Health Ministry, Alexei Nadezhdin, said the device is only an indicator that drugs may be present in the driver's system and if the test shows positive, then the driver would be sent to a clinic for further analysis.
The paper did not specify which drugs the device could detect or how it would show the degree of narcotic intoxication.
Russia introduced on August 6 a zero tolerance law forbidding motorists from touching a drop of alcohol before sitting behind the wheel.
Earlier, motorists were allowed the equivalent of a half-pint of beer.
The legislation is part of a larger campaign to cut down the number of road accidents caused by drink driving, which, according to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, had made considerable headway in the past few years.
Critics believe the narcotics tester will be just a new way for police to receive bribes from drivers suspected of drug use.
Other critics say "idiot drivers" and bad roads are the main cause of accidents in Russia and that innocent drivers could be penalized by the new drink driving law since beverages containing small amounts of alcohol such as dairy products made from fermented milk (buttermilk) and bread-based kvass are popular in Russia and are detected by breathalyzer tests.
MOSCOW, August 17 (RIA Novosti)
