NPS and Other Emerging Drugs in the Clearnet and Darkweb.

Abstract

Psychoactive substances have a long history of use as doping substances in sport, usually constituting the second most used drug class behind anabolic steroids. In addition to the classic doping substances, a more challenging problem is presented by the increasing availability of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and other emerging drugs (ED). These news drugs need first to be found and identified, classified based on the little information available as doping substances and finally analytical methods have to be developed or implemented in WADA accredited laboratories to detect them. In an effort to anticipate doping trends, one of the methods WADA uses is an intelligence-based approach, where new or potential doping substances are identified and purchased to confirm or identify their chemical structures and to assess their quality and purity. In this study we set out to monitor both the Darkweb and the Clearweb for emerging drugs with potential doping benefits. A comparison between the prevalence of these substances from both sources will be presented as well, to establish whether athletes have access to more sophisticated substances in the Darkweb. The presence of these NPS/ED as components of multipart nutritional subjects will be reported as well. These results will serve to target efforts to discover new substances entering the sport world for doping purposes and develop prevention and rapid-response strategies.