Project profile — SMART LAB United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - phase II

This project aims to increase the capacity of law enforcement, border control, and forensic laboratories in 5 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, (Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica) to detect, identify and report on synthetic drugs and their precursors. Also, the project seeks to strengthen the collaboration among the respective countries to increase information exchange on synthetic drugs and their precursors to enhance their drug control strategies, develop more complete and comprehensive drug legislations, and improve early warning systems to provide guidance on effective responses.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) improved skills of law enforcement, border control and laboratories to detect, identify and report synthetic drugs and their precursors; (2) improved access and knowledge by drug policy makers and counter-narcotic officials from selected beneficiary countries to gender-sensitive information on emerging threats from synthetic drugs and their precursors; and (3) increased ability of toxicology laboratories in selected beneficiary countries to generate and share gender-sensitive information on synthetic drugs for gender-sensitive drug control strategies.

Results achieved as of May 2023 include: (1) enabled 13 countries to use new machines to conduct 58,000 drug scans. This led to a large seizure of 88 kilograms (kg) of drugs, up from 11.6 kg in 2022, and identified 92 new psychoactive substances; (2) trained 195 forensic experts (107 women and 88 men) from 12 countries and reached 590 forensic and law enforcement personnel through online tools; (3) supported 1,873 participants (615 women, 631 men, and 627 unstated) to benefit from online learning; and (4) influenced legislative changes in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Trinidad and Tobago. This led to the control of 44 new synthetic drugs.