New psychoactive substances (NPS) are a class of drugs that have been designed to mimic established prohibited drugs. Tryptamines, the occurrence of which was studied in this thesis, are substances belonging to the NPS group and are derivatives of indolalkylamine. Some of the naturally occurring ones are neurotransmitters, most of the synthetically derived ones are psychoactive hallucinogens. They act specifically on serotonin receptors and cause hallucinations, aggression, even addiction.
For this task, we have used data from the European Database on New Drugs (EDNDII), which is organised by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).
In Europe, these substances have been tracked since 2003, so in our work we have presented graphs and tables to show the substances that have appeared on the European market between 2003 and 2022.
The largest number of synthetic tryptamines on the European market, in terms of number, were seized (samples obtained with the help of various governmental organisations, e.g. police), followed by collected (samples brought by users) and biological samples (samples obtained from blood, urine). The more serious poisoning cases collected in the EDNDII database are so far fewer than for other NPS. In the 19 years mentioned, a total of 58 different new synthetic tryptamines have appeared on the European market. In Sweden, there was the highest number of new discoveries, while Slovenia was in 4th place, with 6 new discoveries. They have been present in our country since 2011 and have spread especially to Germany, Sweden and France. When looking at the incidence of new tryptamines in Europe per million inhabitants, Slovenia is at the top, with approximately 3 tryptamines per million inhabitants. Sweden is also known as a country with the highest number of tryptamines reported over the years (33), followed by Slovenia (23), and then other countries such as the United Kingdom (19), Germany (19) and France (17). In 2019 and 2021, 10 synthetic tryptamines were included in Schedule I of the Regulation on the classification of prohibited drugs in Slovenia. There are no such substances that have been intensively monitored or have been issued with a risk assessment. However, a review of the notified reports shows that most synthetic tryptamines were notified in the European area in 2012 and 2017, mostly as seized samples. According to the NIJZ data, it can be concluded that drug use generally decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic and for tryptamines we assume that it has increased, as our data show that there are more identifications during this period.
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