This book builds on an earlier publication by the same author: The Misuse of Drugs Act: A Guide for Forensic Scientists. It provides a chemical background to the domestic and international legal controls on drugs of abuse and related substances and includes coverage of 'designer drugs' and generic/analogue controls from the UK, US and New Zealand perspectives. The content of the book has been fully updated and rearranged and the scope has been considerably expanded. More general chapters cover the recent history of the drug classification debate and a proposal for consolidating a wide range of legal controls on chemical substances. An account is provided of the Early Warning System on 'New Psychoactive Substances' in operation in the European Union. Technical and subsidiary material is placed in 20 Appendices, which list controlled substances and cover topics such as: precursor chemicals, related legislation, sentencing guidelines and detailed chemical/pharmacological profiles of the most commonly-abused drugs. There is a glossary and a bibliography, while extensive footnotes support the text and provide references to selected publications and Internet sources. The book contains a number of unique features, not found in any other single publication: * For the forensic scientist, the book contains a complete list of all drug substances controlled by UK and International law. It explains the chemical-structural definitions and the significance to the legislation of terms such as salt, base, stereoisomer, ester, ether, derivative, homologue and isotope * For the more general reader, there is an account of the history of domestic, European and International drugs control, the long debate about drug classification, the role of risk assessment and how the legal control of a wide range of harmful chemical substances might be consolidated * For the criminal lawyer, the book provides a useful adjunct to standard works on case and statute law This unique book has general appeal to anybody needing information on drugs of abuse including forensic scientists, researchers, teachers, criminal lawyers, customs officers, postgraduate and graduate students. It is of particular interest to those studying forensic science.
About the Author: Leslie King spent nearly thirty years in the Forensic Science Service (FSS). His responsibilities included examining items submitted for the analysis of alcohol, drugs and other substances in cases of suspected fatal poisonings or those involving offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act or the Road Traffic Act. As a result, he has given evidence in the Criminal and Coroners' Courts as an expert witness on many occasions. Before retiring from the FSS in 2001, he was Head of the Drugs Intelligence Unit for ten years. In that role he was responsible for maintaining a UK drug seizure database, providing technical advice on the chemistry and legislation of drugs and their precursors to law enforcement agencies, forensic scientists and UK Government as well as international organisations such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Commission. Before joining the FSS, Leslie King spent eight years in the pharmaceutical industry both in the UK and in Germany. At Loughborough University he carried out research on the analysis of barbiturates and on fluorescence and phosphorescence spectroscopy leading to MSc and PhD degrees. Leslie King is a member of the Home Office Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and author/co-author of over eighty papers on analytical chemistry, spectroscopy, toxicology, risk assessment, forensic science and the epidemiology of drug abuse and is also a member of the Editorial Board of 'Substance Use and Misuse'. He continues to work part-time as an advisor to the Department of Health and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction on matters concerning synthetic drugs and risk assessments, as well as providing training to newer Member States of the EU on drug legislation and chemistry.