Comprehensive Analysis of Drug Residues from a Confiscated Pipe

GC-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry with Chemical Ionization to Facilitate Unknown Identification

Introduction

The continuous influx of new synthetic drugs such as cannabis analogs into society is a major problem for law enforcement, forensic laboratories, and the medical community.^1,2

Relatively simple organic transformations produce novel and licit psychotics that can elude detection by standard analytical methods.^3,4 Detection and characterization of synthetic drugs is complicated by 1) the wide range of active ingredients and variety of botanical matrices, 2) the rate at which new drugs and blends appear on the market, 3) the fact that these synthetic drugs and metabolites are often not targeted during routine forensic analyses,^5,6 and 4) these newly emerging compounds are typically not present in commercially available mass spectral libraries. High performance time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a practical choice for the analysis of these moving targets.

This application note shows the utility of high resolution mass spectrometry with soft ionization to facilitate identification of unknown compounds which were present in extracted residues from a confiscated pipe. When a compound is detected that is not matched sufficiently to a commercially available library, the electronic impact ionization (EI) spectrum becomes difficult to interpret without confirmation of the molecular ion. Accurate mass chemical ionization (HR-CI) results in preservation of molecular ions which is very important for structural elucidation.