Citation

Johnson CS, Copp BR, Lewis A. Drug Test. Anal. 2019; 11(2): 341-346.

Affiliation

New Zealand Customs Service, PO Box 73003, Auckland, New Zealand.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/dta.2522

PMID

30346116

Abstract

In recent years there has been a significant increase in the emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on a global scale. In New Zealand, a similar increase in the detection of NPS has been observed, particularly for border seizures. From 2014 to 2018, there were over 6300 border seizures analysed at the New Zealand Customs - ESR Screening Laboratory, 18% of which were identified as NPS. In total, 134 different NPS were identified, the majority being synthetic cathinones, phenethylamines and cannabinoids. Sixty-one of the seizures had associated package labelling indicating the presence of one, or multiple, NPS in the seized material. The package labelling was found to be 93% accurate, suggesting that this information can be useful to inspection, enforcement and testing personnel when deciding on an appropriate course of action with seized items.

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Language: en

Keywords

NPS; New Zealand; New psychoactive substances; package labelling