COVID-19 Chaos and New Psychoactive Substances: New Threats and Implications

Abstract

The new psychoactive substances (NPS) have been a challenge for control by the international regulatory measures. Parallelly, the enormous growth of darknet, has joined hands for illicit drug trafficking and marketing. COVID-19 pandemic has brought a unique opportunity for growth and herald a further shift towards online commerce and communication, which may evolve the global criminal activities through darknet, further. COVID-19 pandemic has also called for the socio-economic crisis which may divulge vulnerable group into drug-trafficking and supply chain. Amalgam of these makes situation worse, eclipsing epidemiology of NPS, further. Eventually, it also bears ill effects on health of people using it. Hence, there is a need to frame stringent policies for darknet usage and strategies to control NPS, keeping the current crisis in mind.