NPS: Moving from Blanket Prohibition to a Functionalist Approach

The rapid diffusion of novel psychoactive substances NPS presents unprecedented legislative and policy challenges to the current drug control regimes and national legislation. This contribution provides a comprehensive assessment of the current legislative responses to NPS while providing new insights on the potential of a functional-based legal approach in the regulated market, modelled after the UK Human Medicines Regulations 2012. The overall analysis will focus on examining how current legal and policy responses have failed to respond to the NPS challenge and advancing a ‘functionalist’ legislative solution to the NPS challenge as an alternative to existing prohibitionist framework based on a deficient notion of psychoactivity. It argues how a wide legal definition of NPS combined with reactive legal responses and the diffusion of NPS in the more hidden deep and dark Web contribute to unintended health and criminal consequences. It argues in favour of a more practicable and accountable regulatory regime supported by a specialized NPS Authority.