May 17, 2024
Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow
Paul is a Senior Legal Research Fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
SUMMARY
Novel Psychoactive Substances multiply the difficulties involved in protecting ourselves and our families, friends, and neighbors from falling victim to illicit drug use. Ingenious chemists have used the Internet to research the chemical structure of existing psychoactive substances and use their skills to escape a strict reading of the controlled substances schedules. The result is to make extraordinarily difficult our long-standing strategy of relying primarily on an aggressive, supply-side, law enforcement–focused approach to reducing the availability of dangerous drugs. We can—and should—pursue each worthwhile option to combat this even though we know that we cannot immunize society against the pernicious effects of all NPSs, change hearts bent on evil, or save everyone who succumbs to drug abuse.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPSs) multiply the difficulties involved in protecting our-selves and our families, friends, and neighbors from illicit drug use.
NPSs like fentanyl and their illegitimate offspring like the nitazenes have brought an end to the era of drug experimentation.
We can—and should—pursue every worthwhile option to combat this scourge even though we know that we cannot save everyone who succumbs to drug abuse.
Source: https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/twenty-first-century-illicit-drugs-and-their-discontents-the-challenges