# Drug substitutes − Insights on benefits, risks, detection methods, and management strategies: a systematic review

## TL;DR

This paper reviews the risks and challenges of drug substitutes, focusing on detection methods and management strategies to address public health and safety threats.

## Contribution

The study provides a systematic review of drug substitutes, highlighting detection challenges and proposing flexible control strategies for emerging substances.

## Key findings

- Drug substitutes contribute to public health risks and criminal behaviors.
- Technical challenges in detection limit effective policy implementation.
- Flexible control strategies are needed for emerging new substances.

## Abstract

The abuse of new psychoactive substances and narcotic drugs as drug substitutes poses a serious threat to public health and safety. This study outlines the effective use and negative abuse of drug substitutes and outlines associated criminal behaviors to help readers understand the potential risks of such substances. By summarizing the technical bottlenecks in the analysis and detection of criminal cases, this study highlights their impact on case discrimination, which in turn can limit or even render policy implementation ineffective. Finally, based on database analysis and the current regulatory system, flexible control strategies were proposed to address the constantly emerging “new” substances, providing a reference for relevant control guidelines to be formulated.