A. Completul competent să judece recursul în interesul legii în materia penală Decizia nr. 25 din 27 ianuarie 2025
A. The panel for judging the appeal in the interest of the law in criminal matters Decision No. 25 of January 27, 2025

Summary/Abstract: The phrase "person under the influence of psychoactive substances", which constitutes the essential condition attached to the material element of the objective side of the crime of driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or other substances, refers both to the presence of the psychoactive substance in the biological evidence and to its ability to affect the offender's ability to drive. Being an abstract danger crime, the provisions of art. 336 para. (2) of the Criminal Code do not impose the requirement that the psychoactive substances consumed by the perpetrator must also produce a concrete change in his behavior, by proving the impairment of his ability to drive vehicles on public roads, but it is only necessary that the presence of the psychoactive substance in the biological evidence has the ability to produce such a change. Keeping in mind the characteristic of psychoactive substances to stimulate or inhibit the person's central nervous system, resulting in changes in the functions and mental processes and behavior or the creation of a state of dependence, physical or mental, when the presence of the active substance or its active metabolites in the blood is demonstrated in a concentration equal to or greater than the cut-off limit, the state of danger for the protected social value persists, even if a concrete alteration in the driver's behavior cannot be demonstrated. Their presence in the blood and implicitly in the brain directly determines the state of being under the influence, namely the state in which the person's mental, sensory and neuromotor functions are influenced, even if the clinical state does not always reveal a visible alteration, perceptible even to a specialist, of the ability to drive a vehicle. Equally, the fact that the legal text does not require that psychoactive substances necessarily produce a concrete change in the driver's behavior cannot lead to the conclusion that being under the influence of psychoactive substances only requires the detection of their presence in the biological samples taken. The essential requirement attached to the material element of the objective side of the crime of driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or other substances, provided for by art. 336 para. (2) of the Criminal Code, is therefore not met when, although present in biological samples, the active substance is no longer in the blood, but only the active metabolites in a minimal value lower than the cut-off limit accepted at national or European/international level or the inactive metabolites, so that it can no longer produce any kind of change on the person, because it does not have the ability to produce any effect on the central nervous system.

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