MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti) — The Russian government has expanded its list of banned psychotropic substances to include the ingredients of many so-called designer drugs, the Cabinet of Ministers' official site said Tuesday.
The government press release referenced the widespread problems caused by the drugs methoxetamine, NM-018, and methylphenidate, listing a number of regions which have been particularly hard hit by the drugs.
The announcement comes after proposals from Russian senators earlier this month that designer drugs should be banned the moment they are discovered, rather than first going through the lengthy process of listing them on the Federal Drug Control Service’s list of banned substances.
National attention to the problem of synthetic drugs has grown over the past year, after the poisoning of over 700 people from a drug called “spice”, which has resulted in 30 fatalities. MDMB, the active ingredient in the drug, has not yet been added to the Drug Control Service’s list of scheduled substances, but the documents have been submitted. The process of banning the drug has been held up by bureaucratic sluggishness, RIA Novosti’s Russian language service reported.
Designer drugs were thought up as a way to simulate the pharmacological effects of other narcotics while remaining technically legal, and being able avoid detection through traditional drug tests. The drugs are often just as dangerous as traditional illegal narcotics, and often more-so, since they are new, therefore ‘untested’, and cheap.
