Open this publication in new window or tab >>2021 (English)In: International journal of drug policy, ISSN 0955-3959, E-ISSN 1873-4758, Vol. 87, article id 103013Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Background
Sweden regulates new psychoactive substances, including fentanyl analogs, individually. This reactive scheduling procedure enabled the existence of a recreational market for unscheduled fentanyl analogs sold from surface webshops. We measure the interest in 24 named fentanyl analogs and the impact of scheduling.
Methods
We scraped posts in threads on named fentanyl analogs from the Swedish internet forum Flashback.org, 2012–2019. The sample consists of 24 threads with a total of 8761 posts. We construct five measures of interest based on duration of threads, number of posts, and number of distinct posters, and fit a non-seasonal ARMA model to test if there was a change in mean activity after scheduling.
Results
Across the five measures, there was most interest in acryl fentanyl, butyr fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl. The number of daily posts was significantly reduced in nine out of 13 threads after scheduling.
Conclusion
The scheduling of fentanyl analogs impacted interest on Flashback.org. The biggest effect sizes were from the narcotics scheduling of 2-Me-MAF, acryl, and acetyl fentanyl, while furanyl fentanyl saw the biggest reduction after health scheduling. The reductions were bigger for narcotics scheduling compared to health scheduling.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2021
Keywords
Fentanyl, NPS, Synthetic opioids, Sweden
National Category
Social Work
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-36832 (URN)10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.103013 (DOI)000632598300003 ()33181448 (PubMedID)2-s2.0-85096159102 (Scopus ID)
2020-11-152020-12-032024-02-05Bibliographically approved