REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Addictive Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1600212
Drug substitutes -Insights on benefits, risks, detection methods, and management strategies: A systematic review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guizhou Indusry Polytechnic College, Guizhou, China
- 2Drug Identification Center of Guiyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, Guizhou, China
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The abuse of new psychoactive substances and narcotic drugs as drug substitutes poses a serious threat to public health and safety. This study outlines the effective use and negative abuse of drug substitutes and outlines associated criminal behaviors to help readers understand the potential risks of such substances. By summarizing the technical bottlenecks in the analysis and detection of criminal cases, this study highlights their impact on case discrimination, which in turn can limit or even render policy implementation ineffective. Finally, based on database analysis and the current regulatory system, flexible control strategies were proposed to address the constantly emerging "new" substances, providing a reference for relevant control guidelines to be formulated.
Keywords: drug substitutes, Benefits, risks, analysis of technical bottlenecks, management strategies
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bai, Li, Tang, Wan, Wu, Chen, Fang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wang Fang, Guizhou Indusry Polytechnic College, Guizhou, China
Shan Liu, Drug Identification Center of Guiyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, Guizhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.