From Cayman Chemical

Cayman Chemical and FLIR Systems have come together to provide law enforcement with a powerful new tool in the battle against designer drugs by using Cayman Chemical’s forensic standards to create a Mass Spectral Library for FLIR’s Griffin 460 transportable Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) system.

Designer drugs such as “Bath Salts”, synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, and amphetamine analogues present a unique challenge to the law enforcement and forensic community in regards to identification. The newest designer drugs have intentional chemical modifications that eliminate known atomic signatures, preventing identification and regulation.

GC/MS is the laboratory gold standard for forensic analysis of chemical substances, including designer drugs. It is a highly selective technology that can differentiate between similar chemical structures in a single sample. FLIR brings this lab capability to the field for rapid analysis and confirmation of narcotics threats on-site. The addition of Cayman Chemical’s forensic standards further enables the FLIR engineered Griffin 460 to give law enforcement an edge. The collaborative effort between Cayman and FLIR has accelerated the reality of providing a forensically-relevant designer drug database that is available today and that can also be updated as new threats emerge.

The Griffin 460 is the world’s most advanced field-ready GC/MS system and is suitable for a number of different applications including forensic missions both inside the lab and out. By providing laboratory caliber chemical confirmation on-site, the Griffin 460 helps to combat dangerous new drugs by bringing the lab to the sample for rapid enforcement response. Griffin GC/MS systems are extensively deployed worldwide as forensics tools in support of narcotics, explosives and other chemical identification and confirmation missions.

About Cayman Chemical

Cayman Chemical Company helps make research possible by supplying scientists worldwide with biochemical tools used to understand cancer, neurochemistry, oxidative injury, endocrinology, atherosclerosis, and other human health challenges. We specialize in assay kits for the measurement of hormones and bio-markers. In addition, Cayman offers a broad range of specialty biochemicals used as research reagents and qualified standards. Cayman performs generic drug development and production in both Ann Arbor, Michigan and Neratovice, Czech Republic. Cayman employs approximately 300 people worldwide.

FLIR Government Systems, a division of FLIR Systems, Inc., is a world leader in the design, qualification, and manufacture of CBRNE threat detection sensors, ground surveillance radars, thermal imaging and stabilized EO/IR systems, and threat detection systems integration. FLIR’s products are used for a wide variety of airborne, maritime, land based and man-portable applications including national sovereignty and critical facility protection; force protection; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); combat search and rescue (CSAR); border control and drug interdiction; navigation safety, maritime patrol, forward observation, training, targeting and fire control, and laser weapons designation. FLIR Systems is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with service and manufacturing facilities worldwide.

EDITOR: Designer drug is an informal term for psychoactive drugs that were initially discovered through the research of, or experimentation upon, or with respect to, the structure and activity of existing drugs. The development of new psychoactive drugs is a subfield of drug design. In most instances of designer drug discovery, the exploration of small modifications to known active drugs—such as their structural analogues, stereoisomers, and derivatives—yields drugs that may differ greatly in effects from their “basis” drug (e.g. showing increased potency, or decreased side effects). In some instances, designer drugs have similar subjective effects to other drugs, but have completely dissimilar chemical structures.

In some jurisdictions, drugs that are highly similar in structure to a prohibited drug are illegal to trade regardless of that drug’s legal status. In other jurisdictions, their trade is a legal grey area, making them grey market goods. Some jurisdictions may have analogue laws which ban drugs similar in chemical structure to other prohibited drugs, while some designer drugs may be prohibited irrespective of the legal status of structurally similar drugs; in both cases, their trade may take place on the black market.

Source: Wikipedia