The devices that exist at the INML “Mina Minovici” and with which laboratory tests are carried out for authenticity in the case of those caught on the road under the influence of drugs, are almost 17 years old, Dr. Gabriel Horun, Chief Medical Forensic Physician, told News.ro . The medico-legal system is the only one who can provide forensic evidence to the justice system, and the test reports issued by the laboratory are the forensic evidence on which the criminal investigation of the presence of the drug and its effects will continue. or not. In addition, compared to 10 years ago, the number of toxicology tests has increased tremendously, so the existing devices can no longer cope with the huge volume.

“What the Romanian police do on the ground is called detection – identification, that is, they do a selection, an approximate screening with some methods that have multiple sources of error, the sensitivity and specificities are relatively far from certainty, that is, somewhere around 90, 85%, now and depending on the substance to which the test is directed.

Therefore, all these tests require confirmation. To be fair, everything should be very clear, black or white, no gray. So these confirmatory tests are, we say, instrumental tests, laboratory tests, tests that are done with some devices.

According to Romanian law, these devices must exist in the medico-legal system, which is the only one capable of providing forensic evidence in courts or the justice system. The report of analysis issued by the legal and medical laboratory is the judicial evidence, on the basis of which the criminal investigation body will continue or not continue the criminal investigation regarding the presence of the substance and its consequences. That’s why we have in the institute, in the medico-legal system, let’s say, we have devices with which we confirm the presence of drugs that the police suspected because of the sorting they did on the street, because of the drug testers they use.” Dr. Horun explained.

Dr. Gabriel Horun says that in 2006-2007, with the help of a European funding program, a small part of which was funded by the Romanian state, three large centers in Bucharest, Iași and Timisoara were equipped with devices that could handle the number of tests required by the medical and judicial system. , as well as the range of substances that were in circulation during this period. However, currently the limit is exceeded, says the doctor

“In Romania, there was a project in preparation for the accession to the European Union, the PHARE project, thanks to which, in a wider project, the medico-legal system received laboratory equipment, which led to the creation of three laboratories, in Bucharest, Iasi and Timisoara, which at that time time, 2006-2007, represented sufficient potential in terms of both the quality of the devices, the range of substances they detected, and the number of tests required by doctors. -the legal system of that time, so this endowment was appropriate for that time.

But 17 years have passed since then, almost done, in 17 years, unfortunately, updates are insignificant, in laboratory equipment in the medico-legal system, towards insignificant or irrelevant. A very few other laboratories have started to buy their own funds, supported by local councils, other sponsors, universities etc., to try and upgrade their own laboratories. So, at the moment, in Cluj and Bystrica, surprisingly because it is not a significant county on the drug map in Romania, there are two highly effective machines.

However, in Romania there is legislation that deals with the territorial distribution, the territorial area of ​​responsibility of medical and judicial institutions, so the samples are actually sent to the territorial laboratory. Therefore, if there will be the largest flow of toxicological tests in Bucharest, they will not be sent to Bystrica or Cluj in any case, they will be done here in Bucharest,” the doctor said.

Out of 300 toxicology tests, 3,000 have now been carried out. The doctor says that the equipment currently available at INML often breaks down and often needs repair.

In addition, it cannot cover the full range of substances currently circulating on the black drug market. Dr. Horun: “We also have this technological limitation, it doesn’t allow us to be very confident that what we’re detecting is really the true spectrum of substances in this sample or it’s just incomplete.”

“So in Bucharest at the moment we’re juggling a 15-17 year old device, which is about 10 times the number of samples bombarding this lab.

If in the 2000s we did about 300 toxicological tests, now we do more than 3,000. Obviously, these devices are morally worn out, they are physically worn out, they always need maintenance, it is increasingly difficult to purchase parts for such very old devices, unconscious states with them operations are quite frequent. On the other hand, however, an equally important thing is that these devices cannot detect the spectrum of substances currently circulating on the drug black market.

These new psychoactive substances are causing problems to explode after the 2010s in proportion to the passage of time. About 800 new substances are currently known, of which about 200 could be discovered because we have enough information about them to be able to quantify them in libraries of machine-readable data. Well, we can’t do that because we don’t have the necessary equipment.

So we, in addition to not being able to process a very large volume of samples, also have this technological limitation that doesn’t allow us to be very sure that what we’re detecting is really the true spectrum of substances in that sample or it’s just an incomplete one,” also explained the doctor.

An alarm given very late, especially after some medialized events. Dr. Horun draws attention to the need to create a high-performance laboratory. The doctor claims that a collapse in the medico-legal toxicological system is possible at any time.

“Consequences at the level of public health, I see them that way, because I am a doctor and I see these things as a risk phenomenon for public health. The current moment is critical in medico-legal toxicology for these reasons,” the doctor draws attention.

“Unfortunately, the signal at the institutional level was given very late, and I’m talking about the last year, maybe after the high-profile events of the summer of last year, but until then, unfortunately, a medico-legal institutional signal is possible. was extremely weak or non-existent. From that moment on, the forensic institutions made some kind of formal requests for funding, because everything comes down to money, because a high-performance laboratory requires a lot of money. Now, for many, this is a relative concept, because if we are talking about 5 million euros to create a modern high-performance laboratory, I don’t know, at the national level it is an impossible amount to allocate.

But on the other hand, there were always indirect signals with our beneficiaries, the police, the prosecutor’s office, the courts, we always signaled that the samples were late, that they did not have the full results expected by our beneficiaries, so the signals always existed.

However, they were not specified in a synthetic and addressable form. Clearly we are on red alert to prevent an internal collapse knocking on the door of the medico-legal toxicology system. Because in the context in which the Romanian police announce that they are increasing their equipment with those drug tests, those preliminary street tests, that means that the amount of evidence that will be diverted to the medical and judicial system will increase as much. Or are you giving us more evidence for nothing, if my system is stuck at this limit because the parsing machine has an average time allocated for parsing, I have no physical way to exceed it.

So if I can process 10-15 samples in 24 hours, there is no way I can exceed that number under any circumstances. So, at some point there will be a collapse. But the collapse has very dramatic consequences for the person under investigation, because he will be in the conditions of a criminal investigation without permission, for months, and maybe even years, which is unacceptable, this is a limitation of his rights, it is contrary to the principles of speedy administration of justice, which would offered the person a release or charge within a reasonable time, or to wait only a year for evidence on which to actually start a criminal investigation, is a deviation. So, the public health implications, that’s how I see them, because I’m a doctor and I see these things as a public health risk phenomenon. The current moment is a critical moment in medico-legal toxicology for these reasons,” Dr. Gabriel Horun, primary forensic medicine physician at INML “Mina Minovici” from the capital, told News.ro.