MOSCOW, May 31 /ITAR-TASS/. The State Duma lower house of parliament will introduce criminal penalty for repeated drunk driving before the end of a parliamentary spring session, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on constitutional legislation and state construction from United Russia Vyacheslav Lysakov told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

This is a highly debated document which the lower house had been considering already for a long time, “it is already drafted a long time ago,” the lawmaker confirmed. He pledged that “there is no intrigue.” “The delay is explained by an intensive State Duma working schedule, a content-intensive agenda of plenary meetings, latest political events when lawmakers had to work on Crimea’s integration in the Russian legal system in the intensive way,” Lysakov added.

“This will be done for sure during the spring session and the bill will be endorsed in second and third readings,” the first deputy chairman of the specific committee noted.

“Everything has been simplified” in the bill, he added. “Only criminal responsibility for repeated refusal from a sobriety test or repeated drunk driving remains in force,” Lysakov said. Meanwhile, he warned that the effect of the repeated drunk driving rule is planned to extend for a year after the effect of the previous sanction ends.

The lawmaker recalled that if the first violation would entail administrative penalty, the repeated drunk driving case was fraught to criminal penalties in big fines, compulsory or correctional works or up to two years in jail.

Asked whether massive anti-alcoholic road police raids were expected after the law was enacted, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee noted that earlier he “opposed massive raids like those in Finland, when massive express drunk driving tests are being taken, blocking some part of the road.