Measure notified by Senatran came into force this Monday (18); charge for categories A and B will be made only on the first issuance of the CNH
Candidates for the first National Driver’s License (CNH) for cars and motorcycles are now required to present a negative result in the toxicological test with a wide detection window. The measure came into force last Monday (18) in all Detrans in the country, after an official notification from the National Traffic Secretariat (Senatran).
The new requirement for categories A (motorcycle) and B (car) meets the determinations of Law No. 15,153/2025. With the legal change, the laboratory test — capable of identifying the use of psychoactive substances in a history of up to 90 days — now covers all categories of Brazilian licensing. The big difference for new drivers of light vehicles is that the charge will occur strictly when issuing the permit to drive, and is not necessary in future renewals of the document.
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The expansion of the obligation is based on the positive impact recorded on federal highways from 2016, when the test became required of professional drivers in heavy categories. Since then, the authorities have recorded a significant drop of up to 45% in serious accidents involving buses and trucks.
The government’s central focus now is to try to mitigate road fatality among young people aged 14 to 29. In this age group, traffic violence emerges as the third leading cause of death in Brazil. The worrying scenario is driven by the global and indiscriminate increase in the consumption of synthetic drugs, a serious trend recently warned in the United Nations report.
The tightening of medical screening comes in a year of bureaucratic facilitations for drivers. In January, the government program CNH para Todos reduced the mandatory workload in driving schools, which made first-time requests jump exponentially from 369 thousand to 1.7 million in a twelve-month interval. Subsequently, the traditional practical beacon test was extinguished nationally in February.
At the legislative level, the Senate approved Provisional Measure No. 1,327/2025, which allows the automatic renewal of the license for drivers without infractions who are enrolled in the positive registry, in a text that still awaits the sanction of the Planalto Palace to come into practice definitively.
Technological modernization has also advanced in the states: the DMV-SP ended the obligation to print in paper money for the document. The exclusive migration to the digital format generated savings of R$ 137.79 to the citizen. With the 56.6% cut in the issuance rate, the São Paulo value fell to R$ 105.66, consolidating itself as the cheapest issuance in Brazil.
