Phenethylamines are a group of new psychoactive substances that, according to their pharmacological action, belong to substances with a stimulatory or hallucinogenic effect. They include amphetamine and its derivatives and mostly work on the principle of stimulating the availability of monoamine neurotransmitters in the central nervous system and in the periphery. There are also some amphetamine derivatives that are used as medicinal substances, mainly for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The abuse of such substances can lead to addiction and pose a risk to public health.
In our work, we focused on monitoring the incidence of all recorded cases and newly identified cases of phenethylamines in Europe between 2001 and 2022. We used as the basic source for data acquisition, the European database of new drugs EDND II, and additionally, various professional articles, reports and other scientific literature avaliable online. We found out that 104 different phenethylamines were newly identified in Europe between 2001 and 2022. Most of them appeared in the period between 2012 and 2015, when a total of 45 different representatives were recorded. The country that detected the largest number of newly discovered phenethylamines and where the most cases of these substances were reported is Sweden. Slovenia is ranked on the 6th place in the first category and on the 5th place in the second category in terms of the occurrence of phenethylamines in Europe. Substances that pose a greater risk to public health are in Slovenia included on the List of Prohibited Drugs. At the European level a risk assessment is issued for potentially more dangerous substances. So far, it has been issued for 9 phenethylamines. According to the mode of appearance of phenethylamines, seized samples dominate, followed by collected ones brought for analysis by users, and biological samples are the least abundant. Depending on the product form substances are usually found as powders, tablets or impregnated paper.
From reports about discovery of phenethylamines, we can see that their occurrence in Europe has decreased by around 40 % on average between 2017 and 2022, compared to the peak period of their occurrence, between 2011 and 2016. This achievement can be attributed to the successful work of organizations operating in the fight against illegal drugs, especially the Early Warning System (EWS), whose task is to inform member states in a timely manner about the occurrence of NPS.
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