Drug abuse under the microscope

Forensics help combat drug dealers

BOB ARDREY is a senior research fellow in the School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield.

The Misuse of Drugs Act which became law in 1971 listed the substances which are unlawful to possess or supply to others — so-called controlled drugs — without a specific licence issued by the Home Office.

The granting of such licences is governed by the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001.

The Act not only lists specific substances which are controlled, such as heroin and cocaine, but also includes general classifications to cover groups of substances, for example “any compound structurally derived from tryptamine.”

This allows the Government to control new drugs without having to enact new legislation every few months, for example when criminals seek to circumvent the law by modifying the chemical structure of a controlled drug so that it has the same effect — for instance has hallucinogenic properties, but is not specifically named in the Act.

Controlled drugs include not only the well-known abused drugs such as cannabis, heroin, and Ecstasy, but also many compounds manufactured for therapeutic use, the prescription-only medicines (POMs).

The penalties for supply are significantly greater than for simple possession for personal use. This reflects the way in which the authorities view the two types of offence.

The maximum penalty for the supply of drugs such as cocaine and heroin is life imprisonment. For possession it’s seven years and a fine.

In 1973 the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) came into being, one of the roles of this committee being to monitor developments on the drug scene and recommend which new drugs should be included under the restrictions of the Act.

The identification of controlled drugs presents the forensic scientist with few problems as reference analytical data for these is readily available.

Further information which provides intelligence used to disrupt the manufacture, distribution and trafficking of illicit drugs, however, may also be obtained from drug seizures.

Illicit drugs normally begin their journey to the user at the point of manufacture and/or importation in a relatively pure state, but become more and more adulterated (cut) as they pass through the hands of various dealers.

Cutting agents range from materials which are relatively benign, such as sugar or lactose, to others that may pose a significant risk to the end user, such as phenacetin which is a pain-killer no longer legitimately prescribed because of its link to kidney disease, and other legitimate medicines such as levamisole.

As time passes, the tendency has been for “street” samples to contain less of the active ingredient. Amphetamine samples containing only 2 per cent of the active ingredient are not unknown. The user is thus taking larger and larger amounts of these cutting agents and their identity and possible harmful effects are of greater importance.

This dilution of the active ingredient requires users to buy more and more of the drug to satisfy their habits and allows the dealers to maximise their profit.

Sometimes, however, drugs of unusually high purity find their way on to the street resulting in users dying from unknowingly taking an overdose.

The study of purity levels and the identification and amount of specific adulterants present can provide data to link users with a specific dealer. This is not only useful in bringing a prosecution for possession with intent to supply, but enables trends in the possible manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs within the UK to be studied.

Sometimes illicit drugs are manufactured in clandestine laboratories by well-established chemical reactions and at some stage appropriate starting materials need to be purchased. The sale and import of many chemicals used for the manufacture of controlled drugs are monitored by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency so the authorities are alerted to their possible misuse.

Very few chemical reactions lead to a single product and drug profiling can be used for matching samples by taking a chemical snapshot of the by-products present.

The identity and amounts of impurities can therefore be useful in identifying the particular chemical process being used for the illicit manufacture and determining whether two samples, possibly seized in widely different places, originate from the same clandestine laboratory or imported batch.

It is often possible, especially in cocaine and heroin profiling, to be able to identify the country of origin or even the region within a country by profiling the impurities with sophisticated analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry.

The forensic scientist is thus able to assist in combating drug offences at international level and thereby reduce the problems experienced in local communities.