Abstract: This article examines the criminological characteristics of current trends of crime in the area of illegal sales and distribution of synthetic drugs as a negative social phenomenon, as well as the actions of the government and society towards ensuring effective countermeasures against drug use among population and fight against illegal trafficking of synthetic “designer” drugs. This work presents the relevance of the issue and the special aspects of the crimes in the area of illegal trade of narcotics, psychotropic substances and their substitutes (synthetic “designer” drugs, “spices”), which is defined on one hand by the complexity of detection, investigation, and prevention of these crimes, and on the other – the growth in a number of drug users and increased number of deaths due to drug overdose.

Abstract: The article considers the criminological characteristic of the modern tendencies in the sphere of narcotic drugs and psychotropic agents trafficking. The research object is illegal trafficking of drugs as a negative social phenomenon, and the state and society activities directed at an effective struggle against narcotization of population and combating drugs trafficking. The research is aimed at studying and defining of the main characteristics of crimes in the sphere of drugs trafficking.
The research subject includes the cultural heritage, the existing penal legislation, statistical data and scientific and educational literature on the issue of the study.  
Alongside with the general scientific methods the author uses the logical, historical, comparative-legal, system-structural, statistical, sociological (questioning, interview) and other methods.
The methodology of the research is based on fundamental categories of dialectical materialism – the negation of the negation, the transition of quantitative into qualitative changes, and the philosophical categories of the general, the peculiar and the singular, the cause and the consequence, and some others.
The scientific originality of the research consists of the fact that the work considers the peculiarities of crimes in the sphere of illegal drugs trafficking, their heaviness and consequences. Moreover, the article describes these crimes specificity and dynamics. The research reveals the new data about the criminological determinants of the crimes considered. On the base of the results of the experts interviewing the author makes the conclusions about the efficiency of preventive activities.