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Testing for Many Designer Drugs At Once
LilaG writes "Drug tests spot banned substances based on their chemical structures, but a new breed of narcotics is designed to evade such tests. These synthetic marijuana drugs, found in 'herbal incense,' are mere chemical tweaks of each other, allowing them to escape detection each time researchers develop a new test for one of the compounds. Now chemists have developed a method that can screen for multiple designer drugs at once, without knowing their structures. The test may help law enforcement crack down on the substances. The researchers used a technique called 'mass defect filtering,' which can detect related compounds all at once. That's because related compounds have almost equal numbers to the right of the decimal point in their molecular masses. The researchers tested their technique on 32 herbal products ... They found that every product contained one or more synthetic cannabinoid; all told, they identified nine different compounds in them — two illegal ones and seven that are not regulated. The original paper appears (behind a paywall) in Analytical Chemistry."
From the article: "The research is timely, too. 'Many drugs of abuse in the Olympics are designer drugs,' he [Gary Siuzdak] says, in the steroid family. Grabenauer plans to extend her method to other designer drug families."
There are a lot of "for profit" prisons being run by corporations. So generating more inmates may be a goal. More inmates mean more revenues for those corporations.
And this is an easy way for politicians to appear "tough on crime" when they need election points.
Drug laws vary widely of course, but as an example, the US DEA drug schedules both directly specify molecules, including derivatives and precursors in some cases, and also have some entries like "barbiturates not specifically listed." In addition, they include the statement, "This document is a general reference and not a comprehensive list. This list describes the basic or parent chemical and does not describe the salts, isomers and salts of isomers, esters, ethers and derivatives which may also be controlled substances."
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
There's also the Federal Analogue Act that bans any substance that is "substantially similar" to a controlled substance. What this means is totally insane, and completely subjective. The dopamine your body produces endogenously is potentially illegal, since it's substantially similar to mescaline (3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine, and 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine). Your serotonin is equally problematic, since 5-hydroxytryptamine is substantially similar to dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which is Schedule I, *and also produced endogenously*.
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