Dangerous Synthetic Drugs

"Throughout the drug discovery process, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, research institutions, and other organizations publish their studies in scientific journals, books and patents. This information exchange, which is essential to the legitimate scientific enterprise, can be, and is, used by clandestine chemists who duplicate the technical sophistication used by the research community to manufacture and market a seemingly endless variety of analogs of so-called designer drugs." The term "designer drug" is a colloquial term that references substances with properties and effects similar to those of stimulant, depressant, hallucinogenic or narcotic drugs but that are chemically modified to evade control as an illicit drug. Although news reports tend to portray the appearance of these substances as a new trend, designer drugs have been in the illicit marketplace for decades. The distinction of today's designer drugs is the substantial volume and endless variety of designer drugs easily available to the public and the organized, extensive distribution networks utilized by designer drug traffickers. Since the 1970s, domestic clandestine chemists have attempted to manipulate the molecular structures of controlled substances to create synthetic drugs that would have the same pharmacologic properties of a controlled drug, but not expose the chemist or distributor to criminal violations under the Federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) or similar state statutes. Since these drugs are created in a clandestine laboratory, no manufacturing standards or safety and efficacy studies, such as those required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with