Today, we’re diving into an increasingly urgent and complex area of frontline medicine: novel psychoactive substances and synthetic drugs. Over the past decade, the drug landscape has shifted dramatically.

Potent synthetics, unpredictable chemical variants, and rapidly evolving supply chains are creating new clinical challenges for ambulance crews, HEMS teams, and frontline responders. These substances don’t play by traditional rules; presentations can be extreme, toxidromes atypical, and responses to treatment unpredictable.

To help us understand this shifting landscape, I’m joined byDr Caroline Copeland, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology and Toxicology at King’s College London and Director of the National Programme on Substance Use Mortality.

Caroline is one of the UK’s leading experts in drug-related harms, combining pharmacology, epidemiology, and innovative data science to better understand emerging substances and their real-world impact. She advises national bodies, contributes to the ACMD’s Novel Psychoactive Substances Committee, and leads national surveillance programmes shaping policy and practice.

Today, she helps us unpack what clinicians need to know, what’s changing, and how we can better protect patients in a rapidly evolving drug landscape. Caroline's work and publications can be found here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/caroline-copeland

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