Identification of drugs and their derivatives

This paper represents a brief review of traditional procedures for the analysis of confiscated drugs and the application of these procedures to the products formed after reductive fragmentation and halogen-acetylated derivatization of the drugs. Confiscated pills, already tentatively identified by some previous procedure, were analyzed by the use of infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet spectroscopy, and gas chromatography. The same drugs were confirmed by analyzing the alcohols obtained after reductive fragmentation with LiA1H4 as well as the acetylated derivative fractions. Infrared spectra were determined from salt plate films after the evaporation of acidic or basic chloroform extracts of the pill; similarly, ultraviolet spectra were obtained by processing each drug in acidic and basic aqueous solutions. Gas chromatographic analyses involved the determination of characteristic retention times as a function of temperature and the preparation of, and determination of retention times for, derivatives of the drugs. No procedures were specifically included to remove filler material, save its sparing solubility in the extracting solvents; likewise, no special attempts were made to perfect special microtechniques which would allow all analyses to be performed on a single pill. Desired, rather, were the ease, simplicity, and relative speed realized from analysis of approximately five confiscated pills.