New NIJ Journal Article Focuses on Illicit Drug Identification

“Identifying New Illicit Drugs and Sounding the Alarm in Real Time,” a new NIJ Journal article available at https://www.nij.gov/journals/281/Pages/identifying-new-illicit-drugs-and-sounding-the-alarm-in-real-time.aspx, focuses on how an NIJ-supported researcher is helping authorities to quickly identify new illicit drugs. The current opioid crisis is fueled, in large part, by an enormous supply of illicit drugs flowing into the country on a daily basis. The primary source of these illicit drugs is laboratories in China, with federal drug enforcement officials believing the number of Chinese labs producing illicit drugs destined for the United States to be more than 100,000. Thus, identifying a new drug and getting the word out quickly is becoming increasingly important given the overwhelming scale of the problem and the speed with which new drugs are created.