Brno, March 21 (CTK) – Curative preparations containing ephedrine and pseudoepehdrine cannot be qualified as precursors, or substances for drugs production, the European Court of Justice has written in its answer to the Czech Supreme Court’s preliminary question, CTK has found out on the court’s website.
The European court wrote to the Supreme Court (NS) that the preparations cannot be qualified as precursors in the sense of the EU regulation of 2004.
The preliminary question mainly concerned medicines abused by pervitin (methamphetamine) “brewers.”
According to one interpretation, the medicines are precursors, while another interpretation says they are curative preparations containing a precursor that are exempted from the EU regulation.
The EU Court of Justice supported the other alternative in early March.
Its decision is directly based on a regulation of the European Parliament and the European Council on drug precursors of 2004.
The regulation aims at harmonising the control and monitoring of specific substances in EU member countries.
Because of the double interpretation of the law, the NS previously interrupted the service of the sentence imposed on a man convicted of a drug crime. He was to stay in prison until May 2017.
The man was found guilty of unauthorised production and other handling of stupefying and psychotropic substances because he possessed curative preparations which can be used in pervitin production.
The NS wrote on its website now that it will be deciding about the legitimacy of the man’s petition for an appellate review taking into consideration the European Court’s answer to its preliminary question.
Preliminary questions secure the single interpretation and execution of EU legislation in all member countries.
The Court of Justice receives more than 400 of them annually and it takes an average 15 months before it makes a decision.
Czech courts have asked the Court of Justice 49 preliminary questions since the Czech Republic entered the EU in 2004.
