Partnership between Ciatox and the Scientific Police of SP wants to monitor the emergence of new drugs in the state Reproduction/EPTV A partnership between the Center for Toxicological Information (CIATox) at Unicamp and the Technical-Scientific Police (SPTC) of São Paulo wants to change the way the state monitors the circulation of new synthetic drugs. The project envisages the creation of a system that will bring together, for the first time, data from police seizures, laboratory analyzes and intoxication records. The objective is to help quickly identify so-called New Psychoactive Substances (NSP) and support public health and safety policies. Named NSP-Monitor, the initiative is financed by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp), in the Public Policy Research modality, and will last four years. ? Understand: new psychoactive substances (NSP) are synthetic drugs created from small chemical changes in already known substances. As they appear quickly and their effects are still little known, they make identification, treatment of poisoning and control by authorities difficult. ? Click here to follow the g1 Campinas channel on WhatsApp According to the researchers, the proposal comes at a time when synthetic drugs are becoming increasingly varied. The United Nations (UN) World Drug Report 2026 indicates that 755 new psychoactive substances were circulating in the world in 2024, with 118 identified for the first time that year. With the creation of NSP-Monitor, the expectation is to monitor how this movement occurs in São Paulo. Therefore, among the expected results are a standardized database on NSP, analysis tools for public managers and a platform with part of the information available for consultation by the population. In this report you will understand: What is the challenge today in controlling the NSP How the NSP-Monitor will work Why the NSP-Monitor wants to be more than a database Benefits of the platform in the treatment of intoxicated people Who will be able to access the platform When the data will be available The problem today According to the CIATox coordinator, professor José Luiz da Costa, from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Unicamp, the idea was born precisely to solve a deficiency in the management of information related to the emergence of new narcotics. Although the Scientific Police laboratories produce reports on seized drugs, this information is not yet gathered into a single system. "Today the São Paulo Scientific Police does not have a database, it does not have a harmonization of data on synthetic drugs." Currently, there are reports on synthetic drugs, but they depend on manual data collection and cannot automatically consolidate the information produced by the different laboratories spread across São Paulo. This means that a new substance identified in one city may take time to become known in other regions or to reach health professionals who deal with poisoning cases. "Sometimes, a substance is being detected there in Rio Preto, Araçatuba or Votuporanga, and data communication is much slower", explains José Luiz. READ ALSO: Unicamp analyzes saliva from drug users at parties and concludes that 63% may not know what they are using Unicamp identifies new drug 50 times more potent than fentanyl for the first time in Brazil; understand how NSP-Monitor will work In practice, the project aims to create a large monitoring platform for new psychoactive substances. The system will bring together information that is currently dispersed across different institutions, such as: expert reports from the Technical-Scientific Police; seizure records; laboratory and toxicological information; clinical data from the Toxicological Information and Assistance Center (CIATox). By integrating these bases, it will be possible to monitor the emergence of new drugs almost in real time and answer questions that are currently difficult to answer quickly, such as: which substances have started to circulate; in which regions they appear; when they began to be identified; what toxic effects they are causing. According to José Luiz, the system will be automatically fed by the reports produced by the experts. The information will be harmonized within a database on the police server. Furthermore, the project must not change the work routine of the laboratories or transfer the analyzes to the university. Unicamp's role, therefore, is to contribute scientific knowledge to develop the system and organize the information produced by the Scientific Police. "Unicamp's idea, together with the police, is to think about this large database, use the knowledge we have of new psychoactive substances to help and work together with experts." Identify patterns and anticipate trends The purpose of NSP-Monitor is not just to create a database. Researchers intend to transform this information into intelligence tools capable of identifying patterns and anticipating trends. The platform must generate geographic and temporal indicators, produce alerts about the appearance of new drugs and allow monitoring changes in the substance market. These analyzes can help security agencies identify regions where certain drugs begin to circulate, guide police operations and support preventive actions. The expectation is that, in the future, the system will also be integrated into the Muralha Paulista program, an initiative by the Government of São Paulo aimed at monitoring and integrating public security information. Benefits also for health The project also aims to reduce one of the main challenges faced by doctors and toxicologists. New psychoactive substances tend to appear before they are even known by the scientific community and, often, their effects are still poorly understood. This makes diagnosis difficult and, consequently, affects patient treatment. By accelerating the sharing of information, the expectation is that hospitals and specialized centers will receive alerts more quickly about new drugs in circulation, become aware of how they work and provide more efficient support to those who are intoxicated. "This is one of the great motivations of the project: to have information faster", says José Luiz. Thus, the NSP-Monitor also has an important health function because it can: alert hospitals and poison centers about new dangerous substances; improve the diagnosis of poisoning; assist in treating patients; reduce response time to new outbreaks of poisoning. Part of the data will be public. Not all information gathered by the system can be consulted. Data related to police investigations will continue to be restricted, but the project provides for a level of public access to information considered to be of interest to society. "There are levels of access to information, but there will certainly be a level of access that will be public, being the substances that are seized in the state of São Paulo. This will be public because it is in the public interest to know which substances are circulating." Implementation will be gradual The project officially began this year, after the signing of the agreement between Unicamp, the Scientific Police and Fapesp. The team is now working on organizing the available information, defining the system structure and hiring researchers. The implementation will be done in stages. The first Scientific Police laboratories should start feeding the platform by the end of this year. The version open to the public should be made available approximately halfway through the project, until 2028. "The project is four years long. The online platform would be available to the population in the middle to the end of the project. The first police laboratories would already be starting to operate, probably, at the end of the year." 'K' drug seizures worry police and Unicamp warns of increase in intoxication VIDEOS: Everything about Campinas and the region See more news about the region on the g1 Campinas page.