Europe Awash in Synthetic Drugs

Synthetic drugs like the marijuana analogue Spice and mephedrone — similar to the banned khat — have become prominent drugs of abuse within the last year, and experts say that similar “legal high” drugs are coming down the pike, the BBC reported April 23.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said that new synthetics are being developed with “unprecedented speed”; the drugs closely mimic currently illegal substances but have often avoided government regulation, although the U.K. has recently banned Spice and mephedrone.

EMCDDA said it identified 24 new substances last year, up from 13 in 2008.

“The appearance of a large number of new unregulated synthetic compounds marketed on the Internet as ’legal highs’ or ’not for human consumption’ and specifically designed to circumvent drug controls presents a growing challenge to current approaches to monitoring, responding to and controlling the use of new psychoactive substances,” said the EMCDDA in its annual report. “It can be anticipated that the concept of ’designer drugs’ … will continue to change at an unprecedented speed. With rapid technological developments, for example cheap organic synthesis coupled with the increased use of the Internet for marketing and selling new of drugs, it may be expected that synthetic analogues of other major drug groups will appear.”