Assessing the impact of laws controlling the online availability of 25I-NBOMe, AH-7921, MDPV and MXE – outcomes of a semi-automated e-shop monitoring

Understanding and preventing the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people through social media: A multidisciplinary scoping review

ISSUES

The sale of illicit drugs online has expanded to mainstream social media apps. These platforms provide access to a wide audience, especially children and adolescents. Research is in its infancy and scattered due to the multidisciplinary aspects of the phenomena.

APPROACH

We present a multidisciplinary systematic scoping review on the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people. Peer-reviewed studies written in English, Spanish and French were searched for the period 2015 to 2022. We extracted data on users, drugs studied, rate of posts, terminology used and study methodology.

KEY FINDINGS

A total of 56 peer-reviewed papers were included. The analysis of these highlights the variety of drugs advertised and platforms used to do so. Various methodological designs were considered. Approaches to detecting illicit content were the focus of many studies as algorithms move from detecting drug-related keywords to drug selling behaviour. We found that on average, for the studies reviewed, 13 in 100 social media posts advertise illicit drugs. However, popular platforms used by adolescents are rarely studied.

IMPLICATIONS

Promotional content is increasing in sophistication to appeal to young people, shifting towards healthy, glamourous and seemingly legal depictions of drugs. Greater inter-disciplinary collaboration between computational and qualitative approaches are needed to comprehensively study the sale and advertisement of illegal drugs on social media across different platforms. This requires coordinated action from researchers, policy makers and service providers.

Interpol review of controlled substances 2016-2019

This review paper covers the forensic-relevant literature in controlled substances from 2016 to 2019 as a part of the 19th Interpol International Forensic Science Managers Symposium. The review papers are also available at the Interpol website at: https://www.interpol.int/content/download/14458/file/Interpol%20Review%20Papers%202019.pdf.

How to ask about the use of new psychoactive substances to increase the validity of results in self-report prevalence surveys

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS

New psychoactive substances (NPS) represent hundreds of novel compounds. However, the general public might not be familiar with the overarching term NPS. This can result in both under- and over-reporting of NPS use.

DESIGN AND METHODS

The study analysed the last-year prevalence of NPS use in an online survey conducted across I-TREND project countries (the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland). Self-reported NPS use was assessed within two types of questions-a generic and a checklist question. We analysed prevalence for each question separately, incorporated the free-text probe 'other' that followed them, and combined the two questions into a conservative and an inclusive estimate.

RESULTS

Including free-text responses to the 'other' categories increased prevalence of NPS use (from 51% to 56% for the checklist question and 25% to 32% for the generic question). Taking an inclusive approach to estimating prevalence (i.e. indicating NPS use in either a generic list or from the checklist) yielded a higher prevalence estimate (60%, 95% confidence interval 58-62%), compared to a more conservative approach in which NPS use had to be affirmed by both questions (27%, 95% confidence interval 26-29%).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Generic questions might lead to notably lower estimates of self-reported NPS use in comparison to checklists. However, creating relevant checklists is challenging and lengthy survey instruments have limitations. Further surveys might benefit from featuring a combination of the strategies used in this study-a single (generic) question involving a number of locally specific NPSs and a free-text 'other' probe.