How does national legislation in different EU member states compare and how effective is the adding of new psychoactive substances (NPS) to the existing schedules of drug laws versus legislative experimentation designing new schedules or applying controls under medicines or consumer protection regulations?
This report reflects the discussions that have taken place during the Expert Meeting on Policy Responses to Changing Markets of New Psychoactive Substances and Mild Stimulants organised by TNI in collaboration with Energy Control on Nov 28th, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. This meeting was part of a series of expert seminars organised within the project on “New Approaches in Drug Policy and Interventions” (NADPI) funded by the European Commission and the Open Society Foundations funded.
The seminar was a follow-up to the TNI/IDPC expert seminar on Herbal Stimulants and Legal Highs organised in Amsterdam, October 2011 and aimed to take stock of the lessons drawn from the different national and international responses. We compared national legislation in different EU member states and looked at the effectiveness of adding new psychoactive substances (NPS) to the existing schedules of drug laws versus legislative experimentation designing new schedules or applying controls under medicines or consumer protection regulations. Aiming at potentially new policy perspectives, we discussed strategies to diminish the dominance of concentrated and more harmful stimulant substances and ways to steer the market towards milder, often plant-based, substances.
The seminar was guided by the Chatham House rule to facilitate an open-minded exchange of opinions and experiences of policy officials and non-governmental experts in the field. The names of the participants have been omitted from this report. The seminar was attended by 24 experts in the area of harm reduction, drug policy, government officials, NGO representatives and others, coming from 8 different countries in the EU. The report follows a loosely chronological order and the discussions' contents were aggregated in the different sections below according to the themes at hand.
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