The Psychonaut WEB MAPPING Project is a European Union funded project with the aim of developing a web scanning system to identify and categorise novel recreational drugs/psychoactive compounds, and new trends in drug use based on information available on the Internet. We aim both to implement regular monitoring of the web with respect to novel recreational drugs, and to set up a system that can formally liaise with the existing EMCDDA European EWS.
This is a multi-site research project involving research centres in 7 European Countries. As a result we are able to formulate search engine queries and analyse drug related web content in 9 different languages, and will be able to pay particular attention to the qualitative analysis of drug-related slang used in each language (click here to read more about the project).
A database of novel psychoactive compounds will be developed based on those provisionally identified online, with aim of producing technical folders for those substances for which some level of diffusion in the EU recreational consumers' community is confirmed (Please note that, at this stage, access to the database and technical folders is restricted to research partners. However, we are looking at active contributions from representatives of other institutions and individuals – If you are interested please fill in the online form or alternatively you might like to join our mailing list).