Surveillance of emerging drug trends: utilizing the National Drug Early Warning System

The U.S. drug landscape is rapidly shifting necessitating early warning surveillance of emerging drug threats. We describe one such surveillance effort from the United States: the National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS).

NDEWS monitors drug indicators with a particular focus on trends in new psychoactive substances (NPS) and emerging adulterants. NDEWS has five major goals: develop a collaboration network, including people with lived experience, initiate methods that deliver the freshest data on drug trends, integrate data from sources to better understand signals, disseminate findings widely, and train the next generation of surveillance scientists. NDEWS collects primary data using venue-based methods (Rapid Street Reporting), Web Monitoring, and 911 (Emergency Medical Service) data, and utilizes secondary data on drug seizures and poisonings. Information is shared bidirectionally with our 16 Sentinel Sites, our Community-Based Health Expert network, and our informal networks which include medical examiners, toxicologists, funeral directors, reporters, and community overdose response workers.

Surveillance of emerging drug trends is increasingly important around the world as patterns of drug use continue to shift. With a focus on NPS and nonlagged data strategies, NDEWS warns communities at risk to prevent serious consequences and death.