Novel drugs--novel branding.

There has been increasing use of a number of different novel psychoactive substances (often referred to as ‘legal highs’) over the last few years. The drug that has received the most publicity is mephedrone. However, there were 41 new substances detected in Europe in 2010. These novel psychoactive substances are often purchased from Internet-based suppliers and are commonly marketed under broad categories such as ‘plant food’, ‘bath salts’ and ‘research chemicals’. They are also often sold under brand names such as ‘Ivory Wave’, ‘Head Candy’ and ‘Neuroblast’. Neither the broad categories or these brand names are representative of the actual contents of the products. There is often little information on the websites or the packaging as to the exact contents of the products and even when users believe that they are buying the same product, a number of studies have shown that the active ingredients may change with time. As part of our surveillance of newly marketed novel psychoactive substances on the Internet we noticed two products being sold in May 2011 using branding very similar to food products that are widely available and commonly consumed (Figure 1). One of the products was branded similarly to Cadbury’s Flake, the other similarly to