Colombo Plan CEO Highlights Growing Threat of Synthetic Drugs and Dangerous Drug Mixtures in ISSUP Global Webinar
Thom Browne
CEO
The Colombo Plan
On August 19, Colombo Plan’s CEO, Thom Browne, was the feature speaker on an ISSUP Global Webinar The presentation was entitled: “Emerging Lethal Synthetic Drugs and Dangerous Drug Mixtures: The Wave of the Future and How We Should Respond.” The webinar was presented to ISSUP’s global network of professional substance use prevention, treatment and recovery providers, comprising over 52,300 members located across more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, alongside 45 national chapters.
This presentation provided an overview of several Colombo Plan projects using state of the art technologies to test street drugs in the U.S. and numerous countries worldwide, uncovering hidden factors that drive overdose and chronic health problems in substance users, in addition to factors driving national-level drug epidemics.
The presentation also provided concrete examples of newly emerging lethal synthetic drugs (e.g., nitazene & orphine compounds, synthetic benzodiazepines and cathinones) causing overdose in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Southeast Asia; dangerous drug mixtures challenging the western hemisphere and Southeast Asia (Meth/MDMA/Ketamine mixtures and etomidate vaping); dangerous drug mixtures affecting Africa (‘Kush” compounds), the latest information on health threats related to vaping, and the changing composition of Kratom contributing to fatalities and hospitalizations worldwide, to name a few.
