Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

By Madelief van Poelvoorde (NL)

New drugs, new problems: With the illegal drug market quickly developing, New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) have become an alarming issue in the EU, especially as knowledge about health risks associated with NPS is limited. Bearing in mind how these drugs may provide users with an easily accessible ‘legal high’, as new legislation on these NPS takes time to be approved, what steps can the EU take to ensure safety and control surrounding the use of these designer drugs?

Abstract

     Figure on NPS reported per year, report from 2023

Succinctly put, New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) are synthetic drugs designed to mimic the effect of existing drugs. Since existing drugs such as heroin, cannabis, and cocaine are banned in Member States, the illicit drug industry has evolved to try to exploit the legal system and legally sell drugs. The legislation surrounding these substances may take over a year to be adopted, since it falls under criminal law, which in many Member States needs to be approved by parliament. As illegal drugs are harder to sell than NPS, they give drug manufacturers and dealers an easy entry point into a market of addicted users looking for an accessible drug. In 2014 alone, over 100 new NPS were detected. As new substances take less time, money and energy to be sold, due to their legal status in Member States, their prices are generally lower, thus often being more attractive to drug users compared to “traditional” drugs.

Moreover, health risks and long-term effects associated with NPS are often unknown, as they can differ from the studied effects associated with the use of the known banned substances. As the chemical makeup is different, there is no way for scientists or physicians to tell what the long term effects on the body will be. Crucially however, 1 in 6 drug related deaths are the result of an NPS. 3-MMC (an NPS for MDMA) was involved in 38 acute drug toxicity presentations in 2020; this was due to the lack of knowledge surrounding this substance. 

Legal Angle

Legislation in Member States surrounding drugs contains a detailed list of the drugs that are illegal to produce, sell and use. Using this detailed list holds the advantage of no confusion surrounding whether a chemical or substance is legal. The disadvantage of this legislation is that NPS are slightly different from the banned substances on a chemical level, but provide users with the same effect. Since these slightly different NPS are not on the list, it is legal for them to be sold and used until legislation is changed to adapt to the new substance.

With an average of one new NPS being created every week, keeping the legislation updated is almost impossible. To offer you some insight into just how similar these drugs are to each other, this picture shows you the chemical formula of 4MMC¹ (a NPS) and the version that followed after the ban of 4MMC, called 3MMC². The only difference between these 2 substances are the atoms in red, which was enough to decide about the illegality of the former and legality of the latter. 

One of the issues surrounding the fact that all illegal substances need to be individually listed is that it impacts the purity of the drugs that individuals use. The purity of drugs refers to if the drug is purely made up of the substance that it is sold as to or if the manufacturer used cutting agents to lower the production cost. Cutting agents, often referred to as fillers, are substances that are added to drugs to lower the production cost or to compensate for a shortage of a certain substance. When there was a shortage of MDMA, the scarcity made the price rise and made it harder for drug manufacturers to access. This resulted in ecstasy being made with cutting agents to compensate for the expensive MDMA.

To paint a picture of how these evolving substances impact the drug markets, we have a look at the substances found in ecstasy. Before the trend of NPS, an ecstasy tablet was made up of about 70% methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), which is the substance that is most often associated with ecstasy. After a rise of NPS and a shortage of MDMA, manufacturers quickly changed the makeup of their ecstasy pills to mostly NPS and other more easily accessible drugs. As buyers were still buying ‘just an ecstasy tablet’ they were unaware of the change in drugs they were consuming. With ecstasy tablets containing NPS instead of MDMA, buyers were not only in the dark about what they were taking but also on aforementioned (side) effects and long-term health risks. 

European drug legislation has changed over time with new scientific insights on the dangers of substance abuse highlighting the importance of control and more information about these substances. Beginning with the criminalization of certain substances that are implemented by international treaties like the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the EU has gradually adapted their drug legislation to combat new challenges, like the rise of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS). The EU’s response to NPS was the implementation of the EU-wide drug action plan 2021-2025, which is a five-year plan that prioritises the identification of new NPS, through monitoring social media and the dark web to follow NPS trends and emergence. Another important point of this plan is to focus on the reduction of drug demand, through increasing the research about rehabilitation methods and creating more awareness by offering youth more evidence-based information about drugs. While the drug action plan does not specifically focus on NPS, many of the points apply to NPS and the users of NPS. The effectiveness of the drug action plan is impacted by many factors such as available resources, the amount of reliable data, the emergence rate of NPS and the complexity of the drug market.

Key Actors and Stakeholders

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addictions (EMCDDA) supports EU and national evidence-based policies by providing factual, objective, reliable and comparable information on drugs, drug addiction and their consequences. Every year they create the European Drug Report that looks at the trends of individual drugs, but also at harm reduction, NPS and the drug history and development trends up until the current year.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime, in addition to being responsible for implementing the United Nations lead programme on terrorism. UNODC also holds commissions that are the main policymakers on areas like crime reduction for the United Nations.

The European Commission is responsible for shaping EU strategy and proposing legislation. Within the European Commission, the Directorate Generals (DG) are specialised departments focusing on concrete policy areas. The Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME) is in particular responsible for proposing legislation surrounding internal security and the trade of firearms, humans and drugs. An example of the strategy and legislation they propose is the drug action plan 2021-2025, which is a 5-year plan aiming to reduce drug use and the societal impact of the drug industry.

Drug manufacturers and drug dealers: These are individuals or groups that are responsible for creating illegal substances and distributing them. Drug manufacturers are the ones that slightly alter the chemical makeup of illegal substances so drug dealers can more easily distribute the drugs. Research shows the main reasons people become drug dealers or manufacturers are ‘’low parental monitoring, poor neighbourhood conditions, low neighbourhood job opportunity, parental substance use or abuse, and high levels of peer group deviance. ‘’ 

Drug users: These are the ones who buy drugs from drug dealers for either recreational, social or dependent use. While precisely pinpointing the number of people addicted to drugs or who use drugs recreationally, we do know that about 28.9% of EU adults have used illicit drugs at least once in their lives.

Key Conflict 

Legalisation and decriminalisation of drugs

Whether to legalise drugs or not is a discussion that holds many sides and perspectives. An argument can be posed for legalisation when looking at the fact that NPS exist because drugs were made illegal. Prior to NPS entering the market, people were more aware of what was in the drugs they were purchasing, as exemplified by the aforementioned case of ecstasy. When drug users have more insight into the substances they are taking, they can make a more informed decision about their substance use, and they therefore carry more responsibility for the consequences of their actions, since they were able to make those informed decisions.

Additionally, the advantages of legalising drugs include the opportunity to regulate drugs more to ensure their safety. Users would be more aware of what they are taking and there would be less NPS with unknown risks that are being used and produced. Another benefit would be a general crime reduction.  If drugs were legalised, the crimes associated with their sales and manufacturing would be reduced, this is the case because those activities would no longer be illegal but instead be more regulated. As these activities are more regulated and not legal, no amount of law enforcement resources would need to be used to control or uncover drug-related activities. These newly available law enforcement resources could then be used to combat other areas of crime.

On the other hand, disadvantages to legalising drugs include the fact that the number of drug users and the amount of drugs used could easily increase as drugs would be more readily available. As drugs would then be more accessible, the threshold for non-drug users to experiment with these drugs would be lower. This lowered threshold could result in more drug users and a higher societal burden associated with the drug use.

Another concern is the capacity of healthcare.  Resources already need to be spread quite thin, and the treatment of overdoses, side effects or addictions would use up more resources if, through the legalisation of drugs, the number of drug users were to increase. 

Regulations and informed consent

Some scholars argue that the responsibility for combating drug abuse and New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) lies with governments, while others hold that it should primarily be a matter of personal responsibility. Governments are responsible for the welfare of their citizens, but welfare means something different for every individual. For example, while some may advocate for strict drug policies to lower the societal cost of drug use and abuse, others emphasise the importance of bodily autonomy and harm reduction strategies. This debate shows the complexity of balancing public health concerns with individual rights and freedoms.

Drug users have both trades that negatively impact their rational decision-making and the fact that drug use itself has negative effects on decision-making, so you could argue that they are not equipped to decide on whether to use drugs or not as their brain is not capable of making the same rational decisions as a non-drug user. You could however argue that it is within an individual’s freedom and bodily autonomy to decide to take drugs themselves. While the choice may not be seen as rational, one could argue for a certain amount of freedom to make choices, whether they are perceived as good or bad by society or experts. 

Then there is the part about informed consent. As read before, drugs are often filled with either cutting agents or NPS, therefore drug users are not entirely aware of the drug they are taking. Is drug use therefore consensual if the contents are unknown to the user? And can users be held responsible for possible outcomes of their drug use, even if they did not take what they thought they took?

Further Research

• Watch this Ted Talk by Sara Garofalo on the effect of drugs on the brain
• Watch this YouTube video by MixMag on the evolution of ecstasy over the years.
• Read this paper by the National Centre of Biotechnology Information on the health and social problems associated with NPS
• Read this article by Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldockon the economic benefits of drug legalisation

Personal Research

To prepare yourself for the session, pick a country within the EU that is not your home country and look into the following questions. Please take an overview of the research you have done, with you to the conference so you can present your findings to the group.

• Is there any legislation surrounding NPS that is not EU wide that is specific to that country? What does that legislation entail?
• What do you think about the legislation in that country? Does it seem effective?
• Are there any characteristics of that policy that seem weak or can be easily exploited?

Are NPS used a lot in that country? Are there any societal consequences associated with the use of drugs or NPS in that country?

1. Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone) is an em pathogen-stimulant drug, which means it speeds up the messages travelling between the brain and body. Mephedrone also increases feelings of being socially accepted and connected to others. ↩︎
2. 3-MMC has a stimulating effect and slightly changes consciousness. The effect is experienced as a cross between XTC and cocaine. You become more alert, more social, happy, fatigue disappears and your self-confidence increases. ↩︎