| dc.description.abstract | The misuse of psychoactive substances is
attracting a great deal of attention from the general public.
An increase use of psychoactive substances is observed
among young people who do not have enough awareness
of the harmful effects of these substances. Easy access to
illicit drugs at low cost and lack of effective means of routine
screening for new psychoactive substances (NPS)
have contributed to the rapid increase in their use. New
research and evidence suggest that drug use can cause a
variety of adverse psychological and physiological effects
on human health (anxiety, panic, paranoia, psychosis,
and seizures). We describe different classes of these NPS
drugs with emphasis on the methods used to identify them
and the identification of their metabolites in biological
specimens. This is the first review that thoroughly gives
the literature on both natural and synthetic illegal drugs
with old known data and very hot new topics and investigations,
which enables the researcher to use it as a starting
point in the literature exploration and planning of the own
research. For the first time, the conformational analysis
was done for selected illegal drugs, giving rise to the
search of the biologically active conformations both theoretically
and using lab experiments. | en_US |
