Health and social problems associated with recent Novel Psychoactive Substance (NPS) use amongst marginalised, nightlife and online users in six European countries.

Continued diversification and use of new psychoactive substances (NPS) across Europe remains a public health challenge. The study describes health and social consequences of recent NPS use as reported in a survey of marginalised, nightlife and online NPS users in the Netherlands, Hungary, Portugal, Ireland, Germany and Poland (n = 3023). Some respondents were unable to categorise NPS they had used. Use of ‘herbal blends’ and ‘synthetic cannabinoids obtained pure’ was most reported in Germany, Poland and Hungary, and use of ‘branded stimulants’ and ‘stimulants/empathogens/nootropics obtained pure’ was most reported in the Netherlands. Increased heart rate and palpitation, dizziness, anxiety, horror trips and headaches were most commonly reported acute side effects. Marginalised users reported substantially more acute side effects, more mid- and long-term mental and physical problems, and more social problems. Development of country-specific NPS awareness raising initiatives, health and social service needs assessments, and targeted responses are warranted

Drowning in diversity? A systematic way of clustering and selecting a representative set of new psychoactive substances

Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. Material from this article can be used in other publications provided that the correct acknowledgement is given with the reproduced material.New psychoactive substances (NPS) can be generally described as a set of compounds that have been designed to mimic the effects of illegal recreational drugs, but are not subject to restriction or control with respect to existing regulation and legislation. In recent years, the number and chemical diversity of emergent NPS has increased substantially, and regulators have struggled to develop methods for accurate detection of NPS at the same rate. Existing approaches to NPS classification are pragmatic and/or semi-systematic and do not lend themselves to objective spectroscopic classification of emergent NPS. As such, this research discusses the identification of a systematic NPS classification based on chemical structures. A set of 478 NPS were grouped according to the similarity between their chemical structural features using hierarchical clustering and a maximum common substructure of 9 atoms, which included both hydrogen and heavy atoms. The rationale for including hydrogen atoms is that accurate spectroscopic identification of NPS will be dependent upon variations in substitution patterns in the molecules. This analysis generated 79 clusters, arising from 21 superclusters. The medoid substances of each cluster were used to form a dataset that was representative of the chemical space encompassed by known NPS. Subsequent categorisation of a test set of NPS showed that the test substances were assigned to an appropriate cluster when the Tanimoto similarity coefficient between the cluster medoid and the test substance was at least 0.5. This indicates that the cluster medoids could be used for assignment of emerging NPS to systematically-defined categories based on chemical structure. These medoids will also aid in the prediction of spectroscopic properties for emergent NPS, which will be invaluable for structure-based classifications and development of methods for detection of emerging NPS.Peer reviewe

Sharing, group-buying, social supply, offline and online dealers: how users in a sample from six European countries procure new psychoactive substances (NPS).

Given the multiple ways of regulations and market situations for new psychoactive substances (NPS), it is of interest how NPS users procure their drugs in different countries as well as in different user groups. Data comes from a face-to-face and online survey conducted in six EU countries, covering three groups of current (12-month) adult NPS users: (1) socially marginalized, (2) users in night life, and (3) users in online communities. While the supply situation differed considerably between countries, friends were the most prevalent source for buying, followed by online shops and private dealers. Marginalized users were more likely to buy from dealers, while online respondents showed the highest rates for buying online. While buying NPS from online or offline shops was relatively prevalent, we also found high rates for social supply and buying from dealers. A considerable part of this market may be classified as “social online supply,” with private suppliers procuring their drugs online. The market features among marginalized users resemble more those of illicit drug markets than those for other NPS users