Discrimination of synthetic cannabinoids in herbal matrices and of cathinone derivatives by portable and laboratory-based Raman spectroscopy

Fentanyl detection and quantification using portable Raman spectroscopy in community drug checking

“…Simulated street drugs, or those seized by law enforcement, have also been tested using Raman spectroscopy. [37][38][39] Additional challenges present themselves in shifting these technologies for use in a community-based harm reduction service. [40] For example, the consequences of low-concentration adulterants are less predictable than what may be encountered in pharmaceutical quality control applications.…”

Portable Raman spectroscopy applied to the study of drugs of abuse

“…Bedward et al [32] estimated the cocaine content in food matrixes using Raman spectra collected by portable instrumentation, associated with regression by partial least squares (PLS). Matternich et al [33] used PCA to distinguish different synthetic cannabinoids from Raman spectra collected by laboratory and portable instrumentation. Braz et al [34] carried out a preliminary study on the seized drug of abuse for presumptive identification of three synthetic cathinone's, n‐ethylpentylone, ethylone, and methylbutylone, using the PCA and multivariate curve resolution alternating least squares (MCR‐ALS) on data acquired with a portable Raman spectrometer.…”

Flipped detection of psychoactive substances in complex mixtures using handheld Raman spectroscopy coupled to chemometrics

“…[20,21,24,25,27,28] The matrix can impact on NPS identification in the following key ways: (1) The presence of fluorescence from the matrix can swamp the Raman signal, and more importantly, (2) the matrix can dilute and/or interfere with the spectral signals of the NPS. While the effect of fluorescence can be reduced or in many cases eliminated by employing a lower-energy excitation source (e.g., 1064 nm) [21,25,29] , the complications posed by commonly used adulterants such as benzocaine, lidocaine, caffeine and procaine in products as well as inert components such as talc and cellulose for powder bulk still represent a critical problem that needs addressing in the development of Point-of-Use detection methodologies. In the case of spectroscopic approaches, this is particularly aggravated by the inferior resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of handheld Raman instrumentation when compared with lab-based equipment.…”

“…While approaches based on spectroscopic techniques and chemometrics have been previously described, these largely rely on the spectral similarities between target analytes and NPS reference standard materials, attributing successful identification to their relative orientation in two-and three-dimensional scores plots. [20,23,29,31] . Uniquely, unlike NPS, the toolbox of substances commonly used as adulterants and cutting agents remains constant, allowing for a detailed understanding of their spectral properties.…”