A novel approach recently being adopted by the authorities in Poland for dealing with the abuse of new psychoactive substances ie. Legal Highs, Designer Drugs (DDs)

Tackling DDs has elicited different responses from national authorities worldwide. Some countries opting to ban new drugs as and when shown to be harmful or introducing sweeping bans based on chemical structure. The effects are however variable with increases in illicit drug trafficking and/or re-branding strategies used by suppliers on substitute alternatives, thereby circumventing laws. In Poland, a novel anti-drug strategy was implemented due to having the fastest growing EU market for DDs with hundreds of hospitalisations arising. This firstly consisted of extending the existing EU mephedrone ban to 50 other DDs confirmed to be psychoactive from ongoing recent studies - being part of a long term public health investment of 5 million Euros. This banned list resulted from an exhaustive screening and analysis of 3000/6000 DD samples taken from commercially available products including laboratory testing on their pharmacology, biochemistry and neurophysiology. NMR has identified 7 seven main chemical groupings so far; the highest incidences being MDPV (23%), and 16% for JWH-081 and RCS-4. Accordingly, the Polish Health Ministry is amending its drug legislation to embrace and update DDs defined as ‘substitute substances' which are henceforth completely prohibited. Furthermore, the Polish Chief Sanitary Inspectorate and law enforcement officers checked over 3500 wholesale/retail premises of which 40% were closed and samples collected to confirm transgressions. Poland is confident that this approach will significantly reduce DD abuse and a comparison of usage patterns with other countries would be interesting. A draft plan for applying this solution is being considered by the EC.