Testing for Many Designer Drugs At Once 281
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."
Re:until we (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:4, Informative)
What purpose does that standard serve? Do you, irrationally, expect the screen to prove anything?
The screen will turn your honest employee into a liar; you will select for drug users that are good at passing screens.
Reality is reality. Sorry to squash the dream.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:2, Informative)
blah blah ... self inflicted efficiently[sic] loss is not the same as a nature[sic] one. There is a difference between an employee who come[sic] in drunk once a week and suffers from a 20% decrease in productivity on those days and another one who is just occasionally off their game and has a similar decrease. The first one probably deserves to be fired, while the other one might just not get any raises.
Why? They're equally productive to me as an employer --- and only the drunk actually has the potential to improve.
Re:Paramilitary Police (Score:2, Informative)
making drugs isn't just about target blacks; it's about targeting many minorities. marijuana was made illegal because arizona wanted a reasons to go after mexicans. opium was made illegal to go after chinese.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:4, Informative)
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*.
CAPTCHA: hormone
Re:Legalize everything. (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Might wanna go look up Krokodil and Russia. That's the result of prohibition.
Ban the good drugs and fiends will go for whatever substitute they can cook up and trust me, we definitely want people who go sit in the corner looking at the pretty colors rather than people coming into the ER with their flesh rotten to the bones:
http://mylifeasateenageloser.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/127550-horrifying-side-effects-of-krokodil.jpg [wordpress.com] (NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE!)