JRC creates new system to identify designer drugs

Scientists at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre have developed new ways to identify and characterise unknown organic chemical substances more quickly.

The new analytical strategies work closely with the Customs Laboratories European Network’s project group on designer drugs and other illicit products in the implementation of such tests.

The Commission’s in-house science service says it is ‘using its state-of-the-art high resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectroscopy laboratories to identify the best testing strategies for unknown chemicals suspected to be in designer drugs’.

According to statistics, over 100 new psychoactive substances were reported for the first time in 2014. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction is currently monitoring more than 450 psychoactive substances.