So-Called Legal High Drugs on Internet Found Phony, Illegal

(DrugAbuse.gov)

A chemistry professor in the U.K. has found many drugs sold as “legal highs” on the Internet do not contain the ingredients they claim, and some contain controlled substances, for which Internet sales are illegal. Mark Baron, lecturer in chemistry at University of Lincoln published his findings online in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis (paid subscription required).

Baron discovered that purchasing so-called legal highs was easy. Online Internet retailers offer a variety of products advertised as research chemicals, bath salts, or plant food, although Baron says they are clearly marketed toward the recreational drug user. He also found that these retailers operate under few restrictions or guidelines, which leads customers to believe the sales are completely legal.

The powdered products were screened with attenuated total reflectance, an industrial testing technique used with infrared spectroscopy. Methanol extracts were analyzed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In this process, the gas chromatography (GC) portion separates the chemical mixture into pulses of pure chemicals and the mass spectrometer (MS) identifies and quantifies the chemicals. The resulting spectra were compared to reference standards, including those in the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology library.

Baron found six out of the seven products tested did not contain the advertised active ingredient. Also, five of the samples contained the controlled substances benzylpiperazine, which goes by the street name BZP and the designer drug 1-[3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]piperazine (TFMPP) combined with caffeine.

“These findings show that the legal high market is providing a route to supply banned substances,” says Baron. He hopes that this work will help consumers become more aware of the risks of Internet purchasing.

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