ABSTRACT
Most countries in the world use an individual listing system to control narcotic drugs and psychoactive substances, including designer drugs. The low efficiency of an individual drug control system has led to its modification. In order to accelerate legislative processes, some countries have introduced temporary control regimes, allowing time for investigation of the need for permanent control. In 2016, new legislation concerning designer drugs came into effect in the United Kingdom. The generic approach to designer drugs is based on the similarity of the chemical structure of a substance to known illicit drug, but, in contrast to analog law existing in the United States, the generic legislation describes clusters of compounds strictly. When a national medicines agency classifies a new psychoactive substance as a medicinal product, it can then demand a license for any importation, marketing, or distribution of that product.
