Effect of the UK Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 on episodes of toxicity related to new psychoactive substances as reported to the National Poisons Information Service. A time series analysis

Abstract Background: There have been recent increases in use of new psychoactive substances (NPS) associated with acute health harms including hospital presentations due to toxicity and increasing numbers of deaths. In response, the UK Government enacted generic legislation on 26th May 2016 (the Psychoactive Substances Act) making it an offence to produce, possess with intent to supply, supply, import or export, or possess within a custodial setting a psychoactive substance. We studied the impact of this Act on monthly frequency of enquiries made by health professionals to the UK National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) about NPS. We also studied five commonly used ‘conventional’ drugs of misuse that had been controlled prior to January 2009. Method: Anonymised clinical enquiries to the NPIS and accesses to the poisons information database TOXBASE were reviewed retrospectively from January 2009 to December 2018 to ascertain the trends in reported toxicity for NPS, cocaine, heroin, cannabis, amphetamines and MDMA. Data were analysed using interrupted time series analysis with the date of the PSA used as an independent predictor. Results: Over the period of study there were 3,866 NPIS telephone enquiries and 79,271 TOXBASE user accesses made by UK health professionals concerning NPS. There were increases in monthly TOXBASE accesses (t = 7.408, P  Conclusions: There have been significant recent reductions in NPIS enquiry activity relating to NPS; although these began before enactment of the PSA in May 2016.