An analysis of legal highs—do they contain what it says on the tin?

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edgarshade

Bluelighter
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Mark Baron,
Mathieu Elie,
Leonie Elie

Article first published online: 19 MAY 2011

DOI: 10.1002/dta.274
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dta.274/abstract

Abstract

In recent years the availability of so-called legal highs over the Internet has hugely increased. Numerous online legal-high retailers market a broad variety of products which are advertised as research chemicals, bath salts, or plant food although clearly intended for human consumption as recreational drug replacements. No guidelines exist as to what is sold and in what purity. Consumers are led to believe that purchased goods are entirely legal.

In this study, several legal-high products were purchased and analyzed for their content. The powdered products were screened with attenuated total reflectance—Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of methanol extracts. Spectra were compared to reference standards and the NIST library.

Results showed that 6 out of 7 products did not contain the advertised active ingredient. Moreover, five samples contained the controlled substances benzylpiperazine and 1-[3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]piperazine combined with caffeine. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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This paper is quoted in a news article. Unfortunately I can't post the news article because it boldly mentions vendors. If you find the news article, or can read the full paper, please don't discuss the vendors mentioned on this forum. It's the rules, guv!
 
People literally have no idea what they are doing, but if it gets them high, thats fine.
Thats insane tho that 5/7 were actually illegal drugs lol
 
Depends on how well you trust your vendor.. (even then, yeah i know, they lie..)

But these tests normally just take a random few without doing any research into wether or not they're legit.. Sounds like they were also testing "named" products with no ingredients list..

Can anyone confirm?
 
I'll note that 5 of those 7 were from the same source [that looked sketchy as fuck to me], so take that as what it is. (though one of them is only caffeine, so of the 3 sources they used, two sent illegal products) And some of the products were "named" products, but not all. (all the "named" products were bullshit)
 
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Baron bought MDAI, 5-IAI, Benzo Fury and NRG-3 ... and two MDA-labelled samples ...
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So yeah, there were some 'named' products. I've no idea what the 'MDA-labelled samples' were, maybe a typo in the article - I can't access the actual journal article.

Interestingly only one of three sites mentioned in the article are still up :)
 
I can't say that I agree with people that buy these brand name style chems like 'blue lust' or 'purple magic' or whatever they're called. If you enjoy the active chemical in those substances then you should find a reputable vendor online and purchase the pure chemical instead of rolling the dice on a fancy name.
 
Yeah it's pretty bold, mailing out actual scheduled drugs. Maybe there's no way to trace it back to the vendor from the package, so they don't care? It's definitely not hard to detect them though, all it took was a GCMS.
 
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