Approach to classification of “designer” drugs and potentially hazardous chemicals. Asadullin

Recently, the range of psychoactive substances used illegally has been widened. As a result, the current classification of narcotic sub stances is insufficient and does not fully describe the existing categories of the psychoactive substances. The purpose of this paper is to systematize and classify “designer” drugs with respect to their chemical structure, neurochemical mechanisms of action and clinical manifestations. The study has yielded the following: the “designer” drugs could be split into: 1) phenyl ethylamine derivatives; 2) synthetic cathinones; 3) synthetic cannabinoids (or cannabimimetics); 4) synthetic opioids; 5) synthetic derivatives of cocaine; 6) lysergic acid derivatives; 7) tryptamine-based synthetic derivatives; 8) phencyclidine derivatives (NMDA-receptor antagonists); 9) piperazine derivatives; 10) GABA A/B receptors antagonists and their derivatives. The presented classification enables better regularization of new clinical phenomenology in modern narcology