Temporary class drug

A temporary class drug is a relatively new status for controlled drugs, which has been adopted in some jurisdictions, notably New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to attempt to bring newly synthesised designer drugs under legal control. The controlled drug legislation in these jurisdictions requires drug scheduling decisions to follow an evidence-based process, where the harms of the drug are assessed and reviewed so that an appropriate legal status can be assigned. Since many designer drugs sold in recent years have had little or no published research that could help inform such a decision, they have been widely sold as "legal highs", often for months, before sufficient evidence accumulates to justify placing them on the controlled drug schedules.

This situation has been deemed to be undesirable, as every time a designer drug has been banned, novel compounds with similar effects have been quickly developed and brought to market, often with worse health consequences reported than the original compound. The temporary class drug status has been developed to circumvent the evidential requirements and allow drugs to be banned temporarily as soon as they are deemed by authorities to be causing harm to individuals or society. The temporary ban lasts for a period of 1 year, after which the drug would in theory be made legal again, if sufficient evidence to ban it permanently had not been forthcoming. During the period of the temporary ban, the temporary class drugs are treated equivalently to established illegal drugs, though with reduced or absent penalties for personal use amounts, and the main focus of enforcement being on importation and sale of the drugs.

Initially, only the dissociative arylcyclohexylamine derivative methoxetamine was banned as a temporary class drug in the UK, effective from 5 April 2012. On 26 February 2013 methoxetamine was banned as a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act along with a large number of other arylcyclohexylamine derivatives under a 'catch-all' chemical structure clause. "In an attempt to prevent legal high manufacturers looking for a new ketamine analogue to sell, the government has placed countless other ketamine analogues into Class B and Schedule 1."

On 10 June 2013, a total of 10 benzofuran and indole analogues and four NBOMe hallucinogens were classified as Temporary Class Drugs in the UK following an ACMD recommendation. Specifically these include 5-APB, 6-APB, 5-APDB, 6-APDB and their N-methyl derivatives 5-MAPB, 6-MAPB, 5-MAPDB and 6-MAPDB, as well as 5-IT and its isomer 6-IT, plus NBOMe-2C-C, NBOMe-2C-B, NBOMe-2C-I and NBOMe-2C-D. This means that sale and import of the named substances are criminal offences and are treated as for Class B drugs.

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