"Designer drugs"--a current perspective

Since the late 1970s, in an effort to quench the ever burgeoning appetite for pharmacological substances of abuse and to satiate their own need for profit, unscrupulous chemists have set up clandestine laboratories to produce and market new drugs for street sale. Using fairly common industrial chemicals, they have altered or modified preexisting controlled substances such as fentanyl, meperidine, mescaline, amphetamine, and phencyclidine, producing derivatives of these parent compounds that, up until 1986, were able to temporarily elude the guidelines of the Federal Controlled Substances Act due to their new and unique chemical structures. Unsuspecting users continue to use the drugs recreationally. This article will present a comprehensive review of these "Designer Drugs" looking at historical data, pharmacokinetics, treatment, abuse trends, and some of the more recent additions to the social pharmacopoeia.