Influence of legislation on NPS

ABSTRACT

‘New’ or ‘novel’ psychoactive substances (NPS) are newly synthesised or available drugs designed to mimic the effects of substances already controlled by UN conventions and legislation in member states. The rapid growth of NPS sales would not have been possible without internet-facilitated buying and selling. When the substances that NPS are designed to mimic have clear global consumer demand, NPS production can be highly profitable. And – because production and supply of NPS is not illegal – the risks of production are comparatively low, leading to lower costs in turn for wholesale and retail supply, and to lower price to the people who use them. It is by virtue of their legality, therefore, that NPS may hold ‘added’ value by comparison to their illegal counterparts. They reduce – or indeed eliminate – the risk of detection and arrest for suppliers and users (Madras, 2016); may generate less stigma than that associated with the use of substances that are not illegal; and may also prove more affordable than comparable illegal drugs.

NPS create a problem for governments because their very existence is a direct challenge to criminalising drug laws. Governments have responded using a range of legislative approaches, including bans of individually named substances, bans of generic classes of substances, or blanket bans covering all or most psychoactive substances not already controlled. An important question to ask is whether, after the implementation of prohibitive drug laws, the ‘added value’ of an NPS substance having previously been legal will remain, resulting in it gaining traction in illegal markets.

We set out to answer this question with respect to generic-type legislative changes in Belgium (26th September 2017) and Poland (17th August 2018). Cryptomarkets provide us with an ideal opportunity to examine whether such a shift took place, given that these online platforms – where users’ activities are to an extent protected by anonymity mechanisms – enable the buying and selling of illegal drugs. We used the DATACRYPTO software to collect data from cyryptomarkets between September 2016 (12 months before the law was implemented in Belgium) to August 2019 (12 months after the law in Poland), as well as at seven additional time points in between, from 20 cyryptomarkets active over these periods.

Indicators of NPS supply and demand showed that, following implementation of these legislative changes, availability and purchasing of NPS products increased on cyryptomarkets from vendors shipping from Belgium and Poland. This effect was most marked for Poland, but for both countries, the increases were not always sustained. NPS selling in Belgium and Poland on cyryptomarkets was not substantial compared to that found in neighbouring countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where NPS sales were an order of magnitude greater. However, across Europe, NPS selling represented an increasing share of overall drug sales over time, from 1% to 4%.

We cannot say for certain that the increased metrics for supply and demand where we observed these will have been in response to changes in the law specific to Belgium and Poland. It seems likely that the wider legislative landscape in Europe may have created a context where NPS products that remained desirable even after the added value of having been legal was removed could gain traction in illicit markets. Further research could helpfully supplement the findings reported here. Particularly valuable would be interviews with NPS buyers and sellers across a range of countries to establish their awareness of new legislation, and how they believed that their buying and selling activities may have changed in response.

If you want to read the full report, please contact margot.balcaen@sciensano.be