Identification of popular psychoactive plants in their powdered form

The narcotic market evolves continuously and new forms of drugs become more popular, depending on the fashion. There is a big interest in psychoactive plants observed nowadays. Herbal drugs are willingly taken by recreational users and sold through the internet all over the world. The most popular forms of herbal psychoactive formulas are powders made of dried plants. The aim of this work was to propose a complex identification method for powders of popular hallucinogens: Salvia divinorum, Mitragyna speciosa and Psychotria viridis. Analytical methods have included both, chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. Thin layer chromatography (TLC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) with principal components analysis (PCA) were applied. The proposed method allows for the identification of psychoactive plants, even when in powdered form.

Acknowledgments: This work was supported by National Science Center in Krakow, Poland under the grant Nr.0240/B/P01/2011/40.