Posted: Aug 28, 2010 1:13 pm
As a chemistry undergraduate, I spent a lot of time in the teaching labs trying to identify unknown compounds using pretty primitive techniques. In a hospital lab, it was mostly detecting and quantitating know substances. "Drug screens" got a few tests for common poisons and the ones we dreaded were the occasional "? overdose" where the obvious stuff had been ruled out but the medics were convinced some kind of poison was involved.
So I would cringe if I were still working and was asked whether a patient had taken a "legal high" when, supposedly, even the experts had no idea what might be in the current drugs of choice. In fact, the current "Ivory Wave" (or at least one sample labeled as such) was catalogued* in one poisons unit as containing Lidocaine and Methylenedioxypyrovalerone. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenedioxypyrovalerone
So it looks as if someone's into analysing such stuff and I wonder whether the problem of knowing what's in those mislabelled packets is simply that there's no coordinated effort to build a database and develop analytical methods. Given the right equipment, it would be an interesting lab to work in.
Is there anyone here involved in such work who'd like to tell us about it?
*http://www.madp.org.uk/content/upload/MDAAT%20Circulations/100823/100823%20Uncontrolled%20Substances%20Update%20No%202.pdf
So I would cringe if I were still working and was asked whether a patient had taken a "legal high" when, supposedly, even the experts had no idea what might be in the current drugs of choice. In fact, the current "Ivory Wave" (or at least one sample labeled as such) was catalogued* in one poisons unit as containing Lidocaine and Methylenedioxypyrovalerone. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenedioxypyrovalerone
So it looks as if someone's into analysing such stuff and I wonder whether the problem of knowing what's in those mislabelled packets is simply that there's no coordinated effort to build a database and develop analytical methods. Given the right equipment, it would be an interesting lab to work in.
Is there anyone here involved in such work who'd like to tell us about it?
*http://www.madp.org.uk/content/upload/MDAAT%20Circulations/100823/100823%20Uncontrolled%20Substances%20Update%20No%202.pdf