NEW psychoactive substances now make up 35% of all drug analysis requests, with a sharp rise in synthetic cannabis use among teenagers – often in e-cigarette form – and increasing cases of polysubstance use among people in their 20s and 30s, according to a report from the South Korean state-run National Forensic Service (NFS).
According to the S, 34.9% of illegal drugs identified in confiscated items in 2024 were synthetic, a significant increase in five years since 2019, when 9.7% were synthetic.
“New psychoactive substances” refer to newly synthesised substances designed to mimic the effects of banned drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and LSD, with slight chemical modifications to avoid detection or classification under existing drug laws.
According to the S, the new psychoactive drug substances in South Korea that were most found in 2024 include synthetic cannabis and synthetic analogues of ketamine, making up 15.2% and 10.1%, respectively, of the overall numbers, and more than two-thirds of the seized synthetic drugs.
For synthetic cannabis, the S added that 3,868 out of the total of 5,650 confiscated items were in liquid form, with 1,262 found inside e-cigarette cartridges and 2,606 holding similarity to e-liquids that fill such cartridges.
“Due to an increase of synthetic cannabis being distributed to look no different from e-liquids used in e-cigarettes, it has gotten especially difficult to identify them as drugs,” the S stated in its press release on May 25.
Other than the new psychoactive drugs, the S added that other prohibited drugs such as methamphetamine and marijuana were also among the most discovered. In 2024, 47.7% of drugs confiscated by the S were methamphetamine, while marijuana made up 12.1% of the confiscated drugs.
Methamphetamine use showed relatively even distribution across different age groups.
The highest number of users were found among those in their 30s at 5,754 cases, followed by those in their 20s at 5,550 cases. The S also uncovered 213 cases involving teenagers.
In 2024, the S added that the total number of drug analysis cases submitted to the service amounted to 120,703, a threefold increase compared to its numbers from 2018, which were some 43,000 cases at the time.
The S added that drug-related crackdowns in 2024 were “focused more on drug distributors than drug abusers”.
This is evidenced by a 12% increase in analyses done on seized items by the S, contrasted with 17% and 15% decreases in urine and hair follicle tests, respectively, conducted on suspected drug users. — The Korea Herald/ANN
