TECH

The astounding breakthrough of new psychoactive drugs in Europe
The first step in combating the spread of new synthetic drugs is to know how to identify them.
New psychoactive substances, often made in laboratories in Asia, are not always illegal, but they can be dangerous because they are unknown molecules. Anyone can buy them on the Internet.
In one of the laboratories of the European Commission's Joint Research Center, where scientists analyze the new drugs. Often the samples are sent by the authorities of the Member States.
"The police and customs officers are confronted with the fact that these substances are much more numerous than traditional illegal drugs." They are generally based on bibliographic data to identify these products, but for these new drugs that have just been we need to start from scratch and we need specialized laboratories like ours to identify these new structures, "explained Claude Guillou, director of the Narcotics Laboratory at ISPRA, one of the laboratories of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. Variations of the same drug quickly reach the market
"The production of psychoactive chemicals is increasing at an incredible rate, there are two new psychoactive substances per week. We have to be able to identify them very quickly," said Fabiano Reniero, an ISPRA chemist.
The concrete impact of the scientific work can be seen in Geel, another of the sites of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.
The Belgian laboratory develops applications for portable instruments that integrate all chemical imprints registered in the ISPRA database. Applications are used by authorities on the ground to detect suspect products. The system is based on Raman spectroscopy. European technology helps identify new drugs
"Raman spectroscopy is an analytical technique where light acts at the level of the molecule and makes it vibrate, which gives us a unique spectrum for each substance," said Jone Omar, a researcher at the European Commission's Joint Research Center in Geel.
Thanks to the joint work of the two European laboratories it has been possible to find a solution for cases where the chemical impression of a substance is not found in the scientific literature.
"When the instrument does not have the spectrum that corresponds to the substance that the customs agent wants to identify, we must handle the substance very carefully because it can be deadly," warned Ana Boix, a chemical researcher at the European Commission's Joint Research Center in Geel.
Since the end of November, the European Union has classified the new psychoactive substances as drugs. The European Commission