Russian Federation - October 2014: At the Russian State Anti-Drug Committee meeting on 6 October 2014, the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, addressed the situation of a rising number of poisonings in Russia that seem to be related to the use of synthetic cannabinoids. Since 2008, the Russian Federation has reported the emergence of 166 different new psychoactive substances to the UNODC Early Warning Advisory – one of the highest numbers reported by any country – 37% of which belong to the group of synthetic cannabinoids. At the State Anti-Drug Committee meeting it was reported that the scale of this problem was growing rapidly. Within the past seven years, the Russian Federal Drug Control Service observed that the seizures of synthetic cannabinoids increased considerably. As a consequence, Viktor Ivanov urged national regulatory authorities to act more quickly. He pointed out that the addition of a substance to the list of prohibited substances is currently taking too long.

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