The potential and de facto positive and negative effects of generic drug legislation have been described using an analysis based on documented evaluations of the experiences in the UK and Germany, supplemented with data from other publicly available sources. In particular, the effects of generic drug legislation on availability, use, sales, and overall health harms of NPS, and switches from NPS to traditional (classical) drugs are addressed. The results show that the introduction of generic drug legislation in the UK and Germany has enabled stricter regulation of NPS but has also led to some major harms within the domain of public health.
Citation: Jan van Amsterdam, Nicholas Burgess, Wim van den Brink; Legal Approaches to New Psychoactive Substances: First Empirical Findings. Eur Addict Res 2 October 2023; 29 (5): 363–372. https://doi.org/10.1159/000531503
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