Automated monitoring of online shops offering new psychoactive substances in the EU

SASF2 is a semi-automated shop finder which was developed based on the experience with the EMCDDA snapshot and the I-TREND SASF tool to monitor surface e-shops offering new psychoactive substances (NPS). SASF2, in contrast to I-TREND SASF, uses machine learning to automatically recognize relevant e-shops, and like that, minimizes human input and has the potential to include multiple countries). Between September 2017 and November 2018, SASF2 conducted regular searches of substances listed in the European Database of New Drugs (EDND). Of the 629 substances from the EDND that were included in the search, SASF2 found 20 opioids on a total of 69 unique surface e-shops. From those 69 shops, 41 offered one or more opioids already in the first two months of monitoring (September-October 2017) and only 12 offered one or more in the last two months of monitoring (October-November 2018). The opioids most commonly found on e-shops offering NPS were U47700 (found n=62 times), Furanylfentanyl (n=53), Acetylfentanyl (n=40), Butyrfentanyl (n=37), AH-7921 (n=25) and U49900 (n=38). There was a major drop over the time in the number of shops offering Furanylfentanyl and a major increase in the number of shops offering U47700. Results will be updated for the presentation with recent data. The findings were limited to first twenty outcomes per search; thus, it is possible that more opioids are offered online than what the SASF2 identified.