New psychoactive substances: Key challenges and responses

Image source: EMCDDA

As outlined in an earlier FlagPost, the availability and use of new psychoactive substances (NPS) have increased globally over the past decade. This has created new public health and law enforcement challenges that existing frameworks have failed to address, prompting a search for workable alternatives.

False sense of safety associated with use

 

NPS are often marketed as ‘legal highs’ and professionally packaged, which can give the impression that they are safer to use than illicit drugs with similar effects. However, very little is known about their health impacts, partly due to the dynamic nature of the market and because the content and concentration of different batches of the same branded product may vary. A NSW Parliamentary inquiry was advised that synthetic cannabis products could actually be more harmful than cannabis itself, and that NPS may present a higher risk of overdose.

Synthetic drugs: Australian and international trends

 

Image source: US Government

Synthetic drugs hit the headlines earlier this month following the death of a Sydney teenager who jumped from a third-floor balcony while under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance. They are again in the headlines this week after the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced it had arrested 225 people and seized 1,500 kilograms of synthetic drugs destined for the US and Australian markets. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) admitted in the World Drug Report 2013 that ‘the international drug control system is floundering, for the first time, under the speed and creativity of the phenomenon known as new psychoactive substances (NPS)’.