Psychoactive Designer Drugs: Classes, Mechanisms, and Regulation

TY - CHAP

T1 - Psychoactive Designer Drugs

T2 - Classes, Mechanisms, and Regulation

AU - Abbate, Vincenzo

AU - Guillou, Claude

AU - Schwenk, Michael

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

PY - 2021/1/1

Y1 - 2021/1/1

N2 - Recreational drugs constitute a continuing problem worldwide that has recently been aggravated by the emergence of a growing number of new psychoactive designer drugs. The drugs of abuse problem is associated with risks of intoxications and is a menace to public health and safety. New designer drugs that emerge on the black market tend to be considered legal (also known as “legal highs”) when labeled “not for human use” (e.g., “bath salts”) and are not in the list of internationally controlled substances. The analogue-principle in its various forms aims at shutting down this open gate of abuse. This chapter reviews the types of psychoactive designer drugs, their biochemical mechanisms of action, the difficulties of unequivocal identification of novel drugs and their metabolites, basic principles of regulation, and aspects of the analogue principle.

AB - Recreational drugs constitute a continuing problem worldwide that has recently been aggravated by the emergence of a growing number of new psychoactive designer drugs. The drugs of abuse problem is associated with risks of intoxications and is a menace to public health and safety. New designer drugs that emerge on the black market tend to be considered legal (also known as “legal highs”) when labeled “not for human use” (e.g., “bath salts”) and are not in the list of internationally controlled substances. The analogue-principle in its various forms aims at shutting down this open gate of abuse. This chapter reviews the types of psychoactive designer drugs, their biochemical mechanisms of action, the difficulties of unequivocal identification of novel drugs and their metabolites, basic principles of regulation, and aspects of the analogue principle.

KW - Analogue principle

KW - Analytical toxicology

KW - DEA

KW - Designer drug

KW - EMCDDA

KW - Opiate

KW - Psychoactive drug

KW - Toxicology

KW - UNODC

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160689468&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-57499-4_123

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-57499-4_123

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85160689468

SN - 9783030574987

VL - 2

SP - 1109

EP - 1126

BT - Regulatory Toxicology

PB - Springer International Publishing

ER -