International Legal Aspects of Control of Trafficking in New Psychoactive Substances

Abstract

Aim. To analyze relevant provisions of the main national and international regulatory legal acts in the field of monitoring and control of new potentially dangerous substances.Tasks. To study the current legal regulation of legal and illicit trafficking of new psychoactive substances in the Russian Federation and the EAEU states. To examine new amendments in the legislation of the European Union regulating the substances traffic control and illicit traffic countering. To provide an overview of the procedures of new psychoactive substances scheduling under the International Drug Control Conventions. To formulate proposals for improving the national and international anti-drug legislation.Methods. The methods of logical and comparative legal analysis, as well as the legal prediction method have been used in this article.Results. The legislation of the EAEU countries in the field of the control of the legal and illicit trafficking of new psychoactive substances needs to be improved and harmonized. The substances scheduling procedures under the international drug control conventions in the EU and the UN are very difficult multi-stage and excessively long. The timing of adoption of new regulatory acts certainly does not correspond to the potential danger of uncontrolled trafficking of new potentially dangerous psychoactive substances for public health.Conclusion. The penalties under Art. 234.1 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code “Illicit trafficking of potentially dangerous psychoactive substances” should be toughened. The legal procedure for forming the state Register of new psychoactive substances must be changed. In the EAEU countries, it should be necessary to make agreement at the interstate level about a uniform approach to the introduction and content of criminal justice responses to the illicit trafficking of new psychoactive substances. In the EU countries and in the frame of the UN, the scheduling procedure under international drug control should be changed regarding new psychoactive substance. All such substances of this kind should be included in a Special Annex for which certain agreed control measures would be prescribed, with the possibility of subsequent expert evaluation of the potential danger of the substance to individual and public health. These established control measures in the fut ure might be toughened or reduced based on the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence critical review and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) position.