slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
Mescaline mystery
An Italian mother took a deep breath and ventured into the unknown realm that is her son’s bedroom, driven on by worries about his poor school performance and his antisocial behaviour. Her worst fear were realised when she discovered a glass containing a dark green liquid with a strong bitter odour that she suspected was some sort of drug concoction, despite her son’s assurances that it was simply green tea.
On the resulting visit to the family physician to discuss the liquid, the boy agreed to give samples of urine and hair, which were submitted to labs for analysis, along with the green liquid itself. All of the samples were analysed by Cristiana Gambelunghe, Kyriaki Aroni and Mauro Bacci from the University of Perugia and Riccardo Rossi and Remo Marsili from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome.
A GC/MS analysis of the liquid after extraction and derivatisation revealed that it contained mescaline, the active hallucinogenic ingredient from the peyote cactus. Peyote has been used in native religious ceremonies in Mexico for hundreds of years then found favour in the 1960s when it crossed over into wider recreational use.
Mescaline acts in a similar way to LSD but is far milder. Its users experience strong changes in visual perception, including colour variations, as well as altered emotional states like euphoria, followed by feelings of anxiety. The physiological effects include higher blood pressure and heart rate and a respiratory depression (hyopventilation).
A subsequent analysis of the boy’s urine by GC/MS with electron ionisation gave a negative result. More than 92% of mescaline is normally excreted within 48 hours of consumption, so the absence from urine does not mean that he had not consumed any of the drug, just that it had not been taken within the last 2-4 days or so. Which is where the hair comes in and it is the hair that was the boy’s undoing.
Picking hairs
The research team were given a hair that was 6 cm long and had been cut close to the scalp. They cut it into 3 equal sections and hydrolysed the pieces with acid before extracting the drug with a mixture of organic solvents adjusted to basic pH with phosphate buffer. In order to enable it to pass through the GC column, mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) was converted to its pentafluoropropionyl (PFP) derivative.
The GC/MS system was fitted with a high polarity column that was coated with a layer of 35% diphenyl-65% dimethyl polysiloxane. The eluting compounds were first ionised by electron ionisation but the presence of other compounds derived from the hair and the column interfered with the peaks for mescaline and its deuterated internal standard.
cont at
http://www.separationsnow.com/detai...ine-found-in-users-hair-by-new-procedure.html
An Italian mother took a deep breath and ventured into the unknown realm that is her son’s bedroom, driven on by worries about his poor school performance and his antisocial behaviour. Her worst fear were realised when she discovered a glass containing a dark green liquid with a strong bitter odour that she suspected was some sort of drug concoction, despite her son’s assurances that it was simply green tea.
On the resulting visit to the family physician to discuss the liquid, the boy agreed to give samples of urine and hair, which were submitted to labs for analysis, along with the green liquid itself. All of the samples were analysed by Cristiana Gambelunghe, Kyriaki Aroni and Mauro Bacci from the University of Perugia and Riccardo Rossi and Remo Marsili from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome.
A GC/MS analysis of the liquid after extraction and derivatisation revealed that it contained mescaline, the active hallucinogenic ingredient from the peyote cactus. Peyote has been used in native religious ceremonies in Mexico for hundreds of years then found favour in the 1960s when it crossed over into wider recreational use.
Mescaline acts in a similar way to LSD but is far milder. Its users experience strong changes in visual perception, including colour variations, as well as altered emotional states like euphoria, followed by feelings of anxiety. The physiological effects include higher blood pressure and heart rate and a respiratory depression (hyopventilation).
A subsequent analysis of the boy’s urine by GC/MS with electron ionisation gave a negative result. More than 92% of mescaline is normally excreted within 48 hours of consumption, so the absence from urine does not mean that he had not consumed any of the drug, just that it had not been taken within the last 2-4 days or so. Which is where the hair comes in and it is the hair that was the boy’s undoing.
Picking hairs
The research team were given a hair that was 6 cm long and had been cut close to the scalp. They cut it into 3 equal sections and hydrolysed the pieces with acid before extracting the drug with a mixture of organic solvents adjusted to basic pH with phosphate buffer. In order to enable it to pass through the GC column, mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) was converted to its pentafluoropropionyl (PFP) derivative.
The GC/MS system was fitted with a high polarity column that was coated with a layer of 35% diphenyl-65% dimethyl polysiloxane. The eluting compounds were first ionised by electron ionisation but the presence of other compounds derived from the hair and the column interfered with the peaks for mescaline and its deuterated internal standard.
cont at
http://www.separationsnow.com/detai...ine-found-in-users-hair-by-new-procedure.html
