Page 43 [43]
3.
ASSESSING THE EXPERIENCE OF USING SYNTHETIC
CANNABINOIDS BY MEANS OF INTERPRETATIVE
PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS (STUDY 2)
3.1. BACKGROUND
New psychoactive substances (NPS) have been increasingly used by people who
use drugs in recent years, which poses a new challenge for treatment services
and researchers (Corazza et al., 2013). NPS are sold as replacements to illicit
drugs, but they often contain unknown compounds. They are produced in small
laboratories or on a commercial scale in clandestine factories by organized
crime groups (EMCDDA, 2015). One of the largest groups of NPS is synthetic
cannabinoids (SCs), which are intended as a replacement to cannabis (Brette¬
ville-Jensen, Tuv, Bilgrei, Fjeld, & Bachs, 2013). SCs appeared on the drug mar¬
ket in the mid-2000s and were sold as herbal smoking mixtures; since then,
hundreds of different compounds have appeared (EMCDDA, 2015).
In Hungary, NPSs appeared in 2010 and rapidly dominated the illicit drug
market (Racz, Csak, et al., 2016). The number of seizures of SC - also known
as “herbal’, “bio-weed’, or “sage” - was nearly double the number of seizures
of herbal cannabis in 2014. The range of substances found in the products
follows the changes in legislation: between one and two dominant active
substances could be found on the market in each individual period. After the
individual substances had become regulated, their presence on the drug mar¬
ket dropped considerably and their places were taken over by new substances
(that were not yet regulated) within 1-3months in the period of 2011-2014
(Hungarian National Focal, 2015). The dynamics of these processes changed
in 2015, as the scope of the substances that could be traded without any
criminal consequences was narrowed drastically by the expansion of the ge¬
neric regulation. By the end of the year, the place of ADB-FUBINACA, which
was legal until then and dominant in seizures, was overtaken by AMB¬
FUBINACA and 5F-AMB, regardless that these substances had already been
controlled since October 2014 (in Hungary substances are banned com¬
pound-by-compound (Hungarian National Focal, 2015)). Users obtain drugs
from acquaintances and friends or from the internet (Hungarian National
Focal, 2015).
Motivations to use SCs include their easy availability, legal status, low price,
and inability to be detected by standard drug tests (Arfken et al., 2014; Cas¬