United Nations Frets Over Increasingly Popular Designer Drugs

Unintended consequences of prohibition, bitches

While the use of traditional drugs is largely stable, demand is soaring for untested concoctions of psychoactive substances that threaten to be more dangerous, the head of the United Nations drug and crime agency said, marking the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The popularity of traditional drugs, such as cannabis – still the most widely used illicit substance – heroin and cocaine seems to be declining in some parts of the world, while the abuse of prescription drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) is on the rise, according to the 2013 World Drug Report launched today in Vienna, Austria.

Sold openly, including online, NPS are marketed as "legal highs" with nicknames such as "spice", "plant food", "bath salts" and "meow meow", a type of mephedrone with effects similar to the effects of cocaine, amphetamines and ecstasy.