Emergence, Diversity, and Control of New Psychoactive Substances: A Global Perspective

Abstract

The phenomenon of new psychoactive substances (NPS), which came to the attention of the wider international community at the beginning of the 2010s, has been unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of substances, their rate of emergence, chemical diversity, and range of pharmacological effects. In particular, the chemical diversity has been a challenge to promoting a better understanding of the NPS market - a fundamental requirement for effective policy decisions and interventions. This manuscript highlights the significant chemical diversity of NPS and describes an alternative, complementary, and pragmatic classification based on pharmacological effects, which aligns NPS to traditional controlled drugs and enhances understanding of the phenomenon. It further reviews actions taken at the international level to address the NPS issue, including changes in the scope of control of some NPS and the enhancement of the United Nations Early Warning Advisory on NPS to deal with the dynamics and evolution of the market.

Analysis of Google Trends to monitor new psychoactive substance. Is there an added value?

“…Even if some of the substances included are not currently classed as NPS in certain countries due to legislative differences, there are a set of those most commonly reported to the UNODC Early Warning Advisory and were used in previous research [20]. The UNODC uses both a chemical and an effect-based classification [34]. Although it may be argued that consumers use drugs for a specific desired effect and thus an effect-based classification would be more appropriate, some substances may have more than one effect.…”

Structure-activity relationships of bath salt components: substituted cathinones and benzofurans at biogenic amine transporters

“…Novel stimulants, a class of new psychoactive substances which includes amphetaminerelated compounds, substituted cathinones and benzofurans, are being detected in "street drug" combinations (bath salts), in blood and/or tissue of emergency room patients, and in stimulant-abuse related deaths (King and Corkery 2018;Krotulski et al 2018;Tettey et al 2018;Simmler and Liechti 2018). The reported use or detection of new compounds includes mexedrone, PV9 (αPOP) and 2-MAPB (Roberts et al 2017;Uchiyama et al 2014;Staeheli et al 2017).…”

In vitro toxicokinetics and analytical toxicology of three novel NBOMe derivatives: phase I and II metabolism, plasma protein binding, and detectability in standard urine screening approaches studied by means of hyphenated mass spectrometry

“…The diverse nature of these particular substances adds significant challenges to forensic toxicology and groups include synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists, synthetic cathinones, phenethylamines, and many others [1,2]. A specific set of phenethylamines is represented by additional modification of the side chain nitrogen atom commonly referred to as N-(2-methoxybenzyl)-substituted phenethylamines (NBOMes), which have been associated with significant toxicity [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].…”