31st ENFSI Drugs Working Group Annual Meeting

The 31st ENFSI Drugs Working Group Annual Meeting was held from 21st - 23rd April 2026, in Faro, Portugal.
 

FOTO:  CFIIV "Ivan Vučetić"

The meeting was attended by 90 participants from various countries, including two drug experts from the Chemical, Physical and Toxicological Department of the Forensic Science Centre „Ivan Vučetić“, , as well as representatives of international organizations: European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) and The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  

The main topic of the meeting was the issue of identifying a New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) appearing on the illegal market. As part of the meeting, a NMR workshop was organized, the leading analytical technique for identifying NPS. There was also a discussion on the implementation of artificial intelligence as an auxiliary tool for compound identification, in terms of proposing structures of NPS based on data obtained through analytical techniques.

A roundtable was a novelty of this year's meeting that allowed active participation of all attendees through questions and answers and the exchange of professional experience. The discussion covered topics related to analytical procedure in laboratory work - from sample preparation through instrumental analysis, to interpretation of results, current challenges in concrete expert cases, and legislative issues.

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