Atropine and Scopolamine Containing “Legal Highs”: Utilizing Chemometric Processing of Direct Analysis in Real Time-High Resolution Mass Spectral Data to Identify “Legal Highs” From Solanaceae Genus Plants.

Lecture Center Concourse

An alarming trend in the ongoing challenge of drug abuse is the ingestion by drug users of currently unscheduled mind-altering substances (also known as “legal highs”), in order to circumvent prosecution for possession and use of illicit drugs. One such class of these substances are plant entheogens that have a long history of use in traditional medicine and in religious rituals in indigenous societies. The increasing recreational use of these substances, supported in part by their ready availability via internet commerce, imposes significant dangers including overdoses and fatalities. In the context of medical emergencies from overdoses or the commission of crimes while under the influence of these products, it is very difficult for crime scene investigators or emergency medical technicians to identify these substances because of the absence of methods for their routine analysis and identification. In many cases, the abused plant drugs contain compounds that are in current clinical use and are scheduled, even though the plants from which they are derived are not. Examples include atropine and scopolamine, which in low doses are used clinically for the treatment of several gastrointestinal diseases and Parkinson’s disease respectively. However, they are psychoactive at higher concentrations, and plants primarily from the Solanaceae family that contain these compounds are abused directly as legal-highs. Thus, there is an urgent need for the development of protocols that can be used to identify such materials so that appropriate treatments can be applied in the event of an overdose, or if laws to legislate the abuse of these materials are instituted. Reported here is the development of a new protocol for the facile and rapid analysis and identification of a broad range of psychoactive atropine and scopolamine-containing seeds representing Solanaceae genus plants, based on the unique chemical fingerprints of each species. Analysis by direct analysis in real-time high-resolution mass spectrometry of the seeds of 24 species (i.e. Atropa beatica,A. belladonna, A. komarovii,Brugmansia arborea, B. aurea, B. sanguinea, B. suaveolensB. versicolor, Daturaceratocaula, D. discolor, D. ferox,D. inoxia, D. leichhardtii, D. metel, D. quercifolia,D. stramonium, D. wrightii, Hyocyamusalbus, H. aureus,H. niger,H. pusillus,H. muticus,Mandragoraautumnalis, and M. officinarum) was used to furnish spectra that represented the metabolomic fingerprints of each species.