Perception of riskiness of the new synthetic drugs (legal highs) among their users

There is a rise of new phenomenon in drug use in the last few years. There has been increase in the incidence of new synthetic drugs, or the so-called "legal highs" and their use in the general population became more frequent. Legal highs are substances that mimic the effects of illegal drugs, but they are not controlled by the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 or the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971. These substances can produce comparable risks and harms simmilar to the illegal drugs (EMCDDA, 2009c). The aim of research conducted for the purpose of this thesis is to reveal how the risks associated with the use of these products are percieved by their users, whether their legal status has any influence on the perception of their safety and how do the users minimize risks that may be associated with the use of these substances Qualitative research carried out for the needs of graduate work used data obtained by two methods. The first method was a content analysis of online discussion forums of new synthetic drugs users. 16 online discussion forums with a total number of 832 posts were analyzed. The second method were semi-structured interviews with users of new synthetic drugs. They were conducted with 9 respondents. Regarding the perception of risk, some..