Regulating New Psychoactive Substances in the Czech Republic: Policy Analysis under Urgency

Abstract

The criminal prohibition of psychoactive substances is challenged every day as new designer substances emerge on globalized markets in a regulatory void. In a case study of a recent regulatory amendment in the Czech Republic, the article reconstructs the formulation of recommendations by an advisory committee working at the boundary between science and practical policy making. A uniform legal status was applied to both high-risk and low-risk substances. The article demonstrates how expert efforts to produce evidence-based policy advice were constrained by an externally induced sense of urgency, avoidance of controversy, internal disunity about drug policy orientation, limited evidence, and the institutional momentum of traditional drug control. The logic of evidence was relativized by the tactical preference for consensus.