Chapter6 - Social issues in the use of new psychoactive substances: Differentiated demand, displacement and adulteration

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the social issues in the New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) debate including availability, prevalence and contexts of use, motivations for use, social harms, policy options and the impact of legislative control. In its consideration of the prevalence of use of key NPS in contrasting UK survey samples, this chapter presents previously unpublished data from the author’s annual surveys at English music festivals in the summers of 2010, 2011 and 2018, suggesting a picture of differentiated demand, pockets of waning popularity and a merging of drug markets. The key characteristics of the evolving NPS market moved from combining legitimate internet trading with features of the international trade in counterfeit prescription medications, to the misselling of NPS as established controlled drugs as those markets increasingly merged. A key theme of this chapter is speed: the speed of emergence of NPS echoes their predominantly stimulant effects and the rapidity of policy change around the world, contrasted with the recency of the phenomenon combined with the time lag between emergent trends in drug use and the development of a rounded scientific evidence base. I return to this point in the final section of this chapter where I cast a critical eye on the development of the NPS debate itself.