New psychoactive substances – temporarily legal substitutes for traditional illicit drugs – have been around in Serbia for several years, but the biased local media coverage tends to leave one poorly informed about them.

"Legal highs: could this be the end of the road?" – asks Joe Shuts in his article, published in The Telegraph. He refers to the new blanket ban the UK government has recently introduced to stop the flood of so-called legal highs, new psychoactive substances which have been spreading all over Europe since 2009. Should other governments follow the British example and adopt similar bans? The answer has to be a resounding "No". 

The Hungarian government banned 42 new psychoactive substances this year – but some of them are not new at all, for example Ibogaine. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union is suing a government agency for not providing access to the assessment reports on the risks of these drugs.   

Alin Rotaru, dubbed by the Romanian media, ”The Kings of Legal Highs”, was the owner of what was probably the first physical “ethnobotanical shop” in Romania, which opened in early 2008 in the eastern city of Galați. Read Drugreporter’s guest author Ștefan Iancu’s interview with him.

Films about drug policy reform from New Zealand to Europe, video advocacy trainings, conferences, reports and campaigns about harm reduction, consultation with decision makers at the national and European level – the Drugreporter Team had a very active year in 2014. Please read & download our colorful 2014 Annual Report and learn more!

Since laws were passed in Romania in 2010 and 2011, prohibiting the trade in previously legal highs and any other commercial products with psychoactive effects, the sale and use of these substances has gone down significantly. Nevertheless, amphetamine-like stimulants and other previously legal highs are still readily available, via a number of different routes, to users who are in the know.

In 1976, the Netherlands separated the cannabis market from the market in other illicit drugs, and allowed coffee shops to sell small amounts of cannabis to adults in a controlled environment. Our new movie, supplementing the report of the Open Society Foundation, tells the story of the Dutch model and highlights its successes, as well as the challenges ahead of it.

A government politician's proposal for mandatory drug testing of teenagers has been rejected due to criticism. 

Watch our video interview with the man who discovered Mephedrone, the drug also known as Meow-Meow!

Check out our new infographic on Romania, where the poor health services provided for injecting drug users lead to increased shared needle use driven by new psychoactive substances. All of this has caused a surge in new HIV cases, and the revival of tuberculosis among people who use drugs.