The Drugs Wheel was developed in tandem with UK Drugwatch, an informal association of charities, organisations and individuals who share an interest in establishing a robust early warning system in the UK for all types of drugs. Guy Jones (technical lead at Reagent Tests UK, and Senior chemist at The Loop) provides ongoing expertise, and microscopic knowledge of drug compounds and UK drug laws.
By 2012 there was an increasing number of new psychoactive substances on the market that didn't fit within previous methods of drug classification. Many substance awareness training sessions made use of an 'Other' category to include drugs such as synthetic cannabinoids, empathogenic drugs such as 5-APB and dissociatives such as MXE. However this 'Other' category quickly became filled with these new drugs; it was time for a more complete model to adjust to this changing landscape.
Initial attempts to classify drugs by drug type (such as tryptamine, phenethylamine, arylcyclohexylamine etc.) proved too complex. However, adding the three new categories of cannabinoids, empathogens and dissociatives meant that all drugs could now be placed neatly within one model.
Classifying drugs in this way allows for advice and harm reduction information to be given by category, meaning that workers don’t need to know in-depth details of every compound.
The Drugs Wheel can be used as a training tool and as a game for use in training or 1:1 sessions. There are free versions of each to download on this site, as well as a range of other resources. When using the Drugs Wheel, please bear in mind the following:
The inner and outer rings of the Wheel allow for drugs to be split into further sections: they can be adapted for use in your own country or organisation, for example they could refer to prescribed or non-prescribed drugs, or levels of risk.
The issue of prescription drugs is also a topic of discussion when using the Wheel; how these drugs can have recreational uses and how their legal status changes depending on whether they have been prescribed for the person taking them.
The Drugs Wheel is a model and as such doesn't aim to list every drug on the market, or pinpoint every compound's effect. Its goal is to simplify the drugs landscape, and as psychoactive drugs affect different people in different ways, some drugs fit into a number of categories. The synthetic cathinones for example can have both stimulant and empathogenic effects that we might associate with altered levels of dopamine and serotonin levels respectively (among other neurotransmitters). The main area of overlap in the Drugs Wheel is that of stimulants and empathogens, however the empathogen category was included because there are drugs available (such as MDAI) that impact on serotonin levels without any noticeable stimulant effects in humans.
Thank you to Michael Linnell for donating the majority of the images for the Drugs Wheel game the excellent tripsit.me and NEPTUNE resources, Creative Commons for enabling projects such as these to stay non-commercial, and users of Drugs Forum and Bluelight from around the world for sharing their experiences.
There are now localised or translated Drugs Wheels: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Australian, Bulgarian and Polish. In 2019 the Drugs Wheel was taken to new digital heights by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation.
