Arillotta2020novel

1. (Arillotta et al., 2020):

The authors use NPS.Finder to identify opioids mentioned online but not in govenrment lists of opioids. In essence, they used a program to search a database with keywords and generate a list. Then they compared that list against the benchmark list from the government. The authors do not describe in detail how they identified whether a drug was an opioid or not.

The authors’ central claim is that an opioid is novel if it appears on one list but not another. They do not discuss how misclassification errors could inflate the number of unrecognized opioids. To me, there is a classification problem. The effects of NPS cross traditional bounds. If the authors judged a substance an opioid but the feds didn’t, the authors could conclude this is a novel opioid, rather than one consciously excluded. Federal authorities might consciously exclude substances because they are less potent than thought or may not actually have opioid effects and, thus, do not merit the limited resource of attention.

The authors cite (Arillotta et al., 2020) to support the statement Because the online NPS scenario typically predicts the real-life NPS market availability... But, the citations link to a description of implementation of an online surveillance system with no real-world validation and a systematic review.

The authors cite Corazza et al. (2013){% %} and Schifano et al (2015) to support the statement Because the online NPS scenario typically predicts the real-life NPS market availability... But, the citations link to a description of implementation of an online surveillance system with no real-world validation and a systematic review.

• Concepts the article discussed nicely:
• References to Read:
  1. Schifano, F., Napoletano, F., Chiappini, S., Guirguis, A., Corkery, J. M., Bonaccorso, S., Ricciardi, A., Scherbaum, N., & Vento, A. (2021). New/emerging psychoactive substances and associated psychopathological consequences. Psychological Medicine, 51(1), 30–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291719001727. *One of the authors of this paper created NPS.Finder, I think. The citation trail says one thing. The manuscript says another.