Development of a colorimetric array to discriminate cutting agents in seized cocaine samples

摘要

Drug consumption is a big global problem, which expands day after day, thus, a chemical characterization of these drugs based on their cutting agents is important to provide information and assist police agencies in drug traffic controlling. The present work proposes an easy-to-use colorimetric array to extract RGB information of the cutting agents commonly added to cocaine (procaine, benzocaine, phenacetin, lidocaine, levamisole, caffeine, acetaminophen and aminopyrine) aiming to discriminate seized drug samples. The RGB values extracted were used as input data for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the non-supervised model shows a satisfactory discrimination of all cutting agents evaluated in a good concentration range (1 to 10 mmol L