VIENNA, Austria – October 2020:  The new Global SMART Update Volume 24 - “The growing complexity of the opioid crisis” provides insight into the complex global opioid crisis, which has recently seen an emergence of a new generation of new psychoactive substances with opioid effects. Despite the central commonality of opioids, the crisis is multi-faceted in nature and its characteristics diverge sharply in different geographical regions.

More recently, there seems to be a shift in the synthetic opioid market towards newer and more varied chemical classes of substances. The displacement/replacement effect is a by-product of a complex cyclic interaction between the imposition and circumvention of novel control measures amid changing market dynamics. The international community has taken major steps towards developing a set of balanced international and domestic responses to address various aspects of the evolving opioid crisis. The emergence of these substances highlights the importance of strengthening early warning systems, expanding public-private partnerships and enhancing existing legal approaches to respond to the growing complexity of the crisis. 

The Global SMART Updates are a biannual publication of the Global Synthetics Monitoring: Analyses, Reporting and Trends (SMART) programme, implemented by the UNODC Laboratory and Scientific Section. The Global SMART Update Volume 24 was published in the framework of the UNODC Opioid Strategy.

For more information, please see: 

Global SMART update 23 - An expanding synthetic drug – Implications for precursor control

Global SMART update 21 – Understanding the global opioid crisis

Global SMART update 17 – Fentanyl and its analogues - 50 years on

UNODC, Opioid Strategy Website - Response to the Opioid Crisis

United Nations, Toolkit on Synthetic Drugs