Illegal Production of Medical Agents and Equipment (Article 235.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)

Abstract

Illegal production of medical agents and equipment poses a global threat to public health of all countries, not to mention its harm to the economy. Human life and health should be protected not only by industry laws that regulate the production and distribution procedures, but also by criminal legislation that establishes liability for most dangerous violations of prohibitions in medicine and pharmacology. The legislative experience of foreign (mostly European) countries shows that the optimal solution to the problem of criminal liability in cases of grave violations of the production and trade procedures for medical production is to introduce criminal law norms with blanket dispositions, where the components of the actus reus of the offence are described though regulatory laws that set special rules and prohibitions for medical services and pharmaceuticals. The analysis of international legal norms and criminal legislation of some foreign countries and the Russian Federation allows the author to prove that it is necessary to single out medical criminal law as a specific sub-branch of Russian criminal law, where pharmaceutical criminal law could become an autonomous institute. The author presents an analysis of the constituent elements of the crime under Art. 235.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and concludes that the terminology of criminal law does not fully correspond to the concepts in healthcare legislation, and also that the analyzed norm in its present edition should not be included in the Chapter on crimes against public health and morals; the author offers his own version of this norm.