Legal issues of addiction assessment: the experience with hair testing in Greece

The purpose of this paper is to present Greek law and legislation for crimes and felonies regarding drugs of abuse and the interpretation of hair testing results with respect to Greek law. Details (such as the process, the decision and the competence of the Court, the police record, the indictment, the expert reports, the defendant's individuality, the crimes and the penal confrontal and many others) from legal cases related to toxicomany and its judicial verification were collected and analysed. Laboratory data of cases concerning the laboratory evaluation of toxicomany in addicts and also occasionally the legal course of cases with addict defendants are presented. In four representative cases segmental hair analysis proved that, for as long as the individuals were imprisoned, findings with drug substances corresponding to that period were lesser or practically absent compared with samples corresponding to the time out of prison, which showed increased drug abuse. Hair analysis provides information on chronic exposure rather than acute poisoning. Its detection window varies from some days to months or even years. The procedure that the law lays down in many cases is insufficient and in most cases impossible to abide by. When the medical examiner is not able to decide if the claim of toxicomany is real, segmental hair analysis may be the only way to prove it. In other cases where the medical examiner is able to diagnose the addiction, a segmental hair analysis is necessary because it can show long-term drug abuse.