國際管制藥物列管及分級制度研究

2015 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) statistics revealed an increasing trend in the number of new psychoactive substances (NPS) categories each year, and cannabis active analogues substances are the most common group among them. Synthetic cannabinoids are illegal manufactured and abused, increasing difficulties to be regulated and analyzed in laboratory. Most of countries listed controlled substances directly by their chemical names in the regulations. However, the rate to modify some functional groups of NPS and synthesize new designer drugs is much higher than that to list the compounds into the control drug list, creating the opportunity for these NPS being completely surrogate from the law. The emergence of NPS therefore becomes an important issue to be solved for many advanced countries. Different methods have been employed to control the endless stream of NPS, such as emergency procedure and temporary Scheduling, the generic legislation model and so on. However, right after the Kingdom revision of the generic legislation model in 2012, newer out-of-rules NPS was appeared. It evidenced that even the generic legislation model is still not enough. Several countries are trying to develop new category system by pharmacology mechanisms. This trend to update category system for control substance internationally should be adapted to reduce the window period of NPS into our system. On the other side, some European countries and the United States promote the legalization of medical cannabis, easily misleading the public's awareness and ignoring its serious and persistent health crisis. Although cannabis is listed as a second-class controlled substance in Taiwanese law, some people believe that cannabis should be re-categorize for legal use. However, use of cannabis will not only affect health but also affect the safety of society. This study will take the qualitative and quantitative mixed-type approaches to study the NPS trend and Cannabis use. Textual analysis will be applied to understand the trend and management system for NPS, control substance categories, and cannabis use. The category systems of NPS for different countries will be summarized with their pharmacological or pharmacochemical classifications. Current evidences on the use of cannabis in countries around the world, to provide our country's abuse prevention strategies and programs. The above-mentioned analysis will include at least the countries in Europe (United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland,etc.); North America (the United States, Canada), Oceania (New Zealand, Australia) , and Asia (Japan, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong). Focus group meeting will be taken to evaluate and compare the association between abuse trends and effectiveness of managements in different countries, so as to find out the weak points in our current policy from the comparison. Summary report will be provide to propose viable recommendations about policy and decision making for management of NPS and cannabis. The suggestions hope to make contribution to improve the current abuse crisis for a better and safer society in Taiwan.