John Zheng Wang
Objective: Although fentanyl is a prescribed drug in many countries, its analogues are not available by prescription. These potent synthetic opioids have become a new threat to public safety with their growing epidemic abuse and addiction worldwide. Therefore, a device for rapid, in-field, and in situ detection and identification of fentanyl analogues is much needed for police officers, crime scene technicians, lab medical examiners as well as public-health workers. Methods: While a direct wipe collection method for the screening of targeted fentanyl analogues by a portable device has not been reported, a portable Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS) was employed to assess the detection of seven fentanyl analogues in a national forensic laboratory in North America. Under a quasi-experimental design, a purposive sampling with a black box method enabled the project to be more similar to a field detection. Results: Seven fentanyl analogous samples were provided by the national forensic lab from its street collections that are mostly commonly encountered. In less than 10 seconds, the LED screen displays the name, concentration, and strength of each targeted analogue. The portable Ion Mobility Spectrometer device was able to successfully detect six out of the seven fentanyl analogues by a simple wipe (10~50 nanograms). Conclusions: With a data search algorithm in the device library, the results of these tests suggest that this novel portable IMS is able to address the challenges from their variety and speeds in illicit market, providing a new direction to safely detect and identify illicit fentanyl analogues for police officers in the field and medical examiners in the lab.
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