Drug Identification Flashcards
Initial Observations for Drug Identification
Characteristics
- Form, Colour, Shape, Packaging, Consistency, Smell
Commonly used/ seized drugs have easily distinguishable features
What is TICTAC
TICTAC is a visual drug identification system for solid dose drugs.
It incorporates a continuously updated database of medicines, drugs and products easily confused with drugs into a very fast and easy system to use.
What is SWGDRUG
A group formed in 1999 made up of forensic scientists from the US, England, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Netherlands and representatives of the UN.
The group was formed to recommend minimum standards for the forensic examination of seized drugs and to seek their international acceptance.
What does TICTAC display?
- Image of drug
- If a controlled substance
- Class/ Schedule
- Effects/ drug test results
- Name/ street name
- Medicinal uses
- Audio pronunciation
- Ingredients
- Physical characteristics
FTIR
Fourier transformation infrared spectrometry.
How does FTIR work?
FTIR Spectrometers work by shining infrared light at a sample and measuring how that light is absorbed.
Drugs and cutting agents have unique absorption patterns that are identifiable by a trained technician.
The test takes 10 minutes, 5mg sample is needed.
GCMS
Easy, straightforward and rapid screening of an unknown drug sample to be performed in less than 1h.
Uses gas flowing through a coated tube to separate compounds by size, weight and chemical reactivity with the column coating.
Thin Layer Chromatography
Uses solvents travelling through a porous medium to separate compounds by their chemical reactivity.
Only documentable through photography of the plate.
Typically used to test plant material extracted in a solvent.
What are TLC plates made out of?
Plastic or glass sheet coated in porous silica material.
How does TLC work?
A spot of extract is placed near the bottom edge of the plate.
Once dried, the entire plate is placed in a solvent tank with the bottom submerged into the solvent.
Simple capillary action causes the solvent to migrate upward, eventually reaching the top of the plate.
As the solvent migrates, it pulls the chemical components along with it.
Depending on their chemical properties, some molecules will move slower/ faster giving a separation of components.
Raman Spectroscopy
Effective analysis of tablets, powders and liquids.
Not strongly affected by proximity of plastics and glass. Therefore, substances can be analysed within packaging.
Capable of separating components in a compound, increasing accuracy.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR)
Monitors the splitting of nuclear energy levels within a molecule when exposed to oscillating magnetic fields.
NMR is intrinsically quantitative, enabling the purity and identify of the sample to be determined with a single measurement.
Highly Expensive.
Mass Spectrometry (MS)
Uses molecular fragment patterns to produce a chemical fingerprint of a substance.
Gives a mass-to-charge ratio of the individual component ions from a sample.
