Novel Drugs of Abuse: What Clinicians Need to Know?

Drug abuse is a growing concern all over the world, and over the past decade, novel drugs have emerged and have become increasingly popular. Designer drugs—otherwise known as synthetic drugs—are manufactured to chemically resemble illicit drugs but may be purchased legally because drug manufacturers constantly change the chemical structure to circumvent drug laws. “In fact, designer synthetic drugs are found to be more potent and dangerous than their street drug counterparts” (NIDA, 2015). People who abuse designer synthetic drugs have suffered a number of negative health outcomes that include anxiety, seizures, hallucinations, loss of consciousness, and significant organ damage (DEA, 2013). Recognition and treatment of new drugs of abuse pose many challenges for health care providers due to lack of quantitative reporting and the difficulty of detection in routine blood and urine analyses (Rech et al., 2015). Clinicians should familiarize themselves with management principles of these new agents. Therefore, the purpose of this workshop is to describe the pharmacology, clinical and adverse effects of several new classes of drugs of abuse as well as management of patients with addiction to these drugs.