19/11/2018
At the Third Annual Week on Precursors, held in Lisbon, the main theme was new psychoactive substances and the threat they pose
Conference held during the meeting
COPOLAD, the Cooperation Programme between Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union on Drugs Policies, which is funded by the European Union and managed by FIIAPP, organised this annual meeting in collaboration with the Serviço de Intervenção nos Comportamentos Aditivos e nas Dependências (SICAD), Judicial Police and Customs of Portugal and the Intelligence Center for Counter-Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO).
The meeting continued in this third edition with its efforts to organise bi-regional collaboration between police experts, forensic experts and analysts from Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union.
The aim for this edition, which addressed synthetic drug precursors and new psychoactive substances (NPS), was to effectively contain the threat of the proliferation of new psychoactive substances on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, in order to tackle these unlawful acts, countries also shared knowledge and forensic studies on synthetic drug production, advances in the detection of clandestine laboratories and chemical analyses of the substances used.
In the area of training, during the meeting, sessions were held to share the progress made by the COPOLAD working groups on precursors.
Drug precursors are the key to foreseeing and dealing with the appearance of new psychoactive substances. The need for a global and regional strategy to prevent the diversion of drug precursors is due to the rapid appearance of these types of chemicals, which are not included in the countries’ lists of controlled substances. The operative investigation of illegal diversions allows the existing control mechanisms to be improved.
