Emergence and identification of new products of designer drug products from the internet

Abstract

Designer drugs represent a rapidly expanding phenomenon particularly facilitated by their Internet availability. These drugs are continuously emerging as analogues of controlled substances (amfetamine, aminoindane, cathinone, phencyclidine, etc...) and once an analogue has been banned; another replacement analogue appears on the market. They are often made in unlicensed laboratories which can result in their poor quality. This highlights the importance of analysing these products through detecting both their identity and purity. However, most of the analysis methods focused on emerging analogues of cathinone and very few studied other newer analogues such as phencyclidine derivatives. This is due partly to the regulations surrounding the analysis, the time consuming analytical procedures and the technical skills involved. Analysis of these designer drugs in the literature included both the identification of drug products and monitoring of products consistency over a period of time. In all cases, the results showed that these products may contain a range of a single or mixture of components including: a designer drug, a pharmaceutical active agent, an excipient or inorganic material.