CHAPTER 1 Detection Strategies for Traditional Illicit Substances RSC Publishing DOI:10 1039 9781839160912-00001

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A new report has revealed Australia has the highest meth use out of 25 countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania, with Sydney and Perth the biggest hotspots. Two men, aged 20 and 23, were arrested and charged with various drug offences. A further 1,060kg of drugs were found in more containers that later arrived in the country last week. Simply enter your number below and one of our addiction counsellors will call you back in a few minutes. If you’re battling with addiction or seeking help for a loved one, addiction helplines can help you find the best treatment centre in the UK, tailored to your unique treatment needs and personality.

Finding useful information and resources about addiction or alcoholism can be a minefield. To increase the chance of a successful recovery and life of sobriety it is important to receive guidance from a reliable source. Some of the symptoms to watch out for include breathing difficulty, kidney failure, extremely high body temperature, stroke, heart attack, severe agitation and seizures. Health effects of meth include irregular heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, fatigue, psychosis, depression and anxiety.

Scale of Drug Seizure Samples

The warship regularly works alongside international partners which make up the 34-nation coalition CMF, which was led by the Royal New Zealand Navy at the time of the drugs bust. As a responsible nation with global interests, the UK is committed to playing our part in these international operations targeting the smuggling of illegal substances. Det Insp Marc Michael said it was “another fantastic outcome” where officers had seized a “significant amount” of drugs from suspected dealers. Three men, 31, 35 and 42, were arrested on suspicion of possessing a Class A drug with the intent to supply and currently remain in police custody. Yesterday , officers from Northumbria Police, with the support of colleagues from Cleveland Police and North East Regional Special Operations Unit , carried out three separate co-ordinated vehicle stops in Cleveland and North Yorkshire following intelligence relating to suspected drugs offences. In total, three vehicles were searched and discovered a total of 50kg of cocaine and 30kg of crystal meth.

meth seizure

Last October, Laos police made the biggest seizure ever of drugs in Asia by netting 55 million meth pills, while a separate raid in January this year uncovered 36 million tablets. Adding dimensions to the mass spectral information is another way in which important distinguishing fragmentation pathways can be identified to elucidate a molecule of interest. This type of approach for example has proven to be important for the determination of the structures of cathinones. It is possible to develop an arbitrary sampling regime however this has the potential to result in a large number of samples from the population being sampled in order to generate a representative sample. To overcome this, a statistical sampling approach should be considered and a large body of work has been done in this area.

Another case found that prenatal METH exposure in neonates causes hepatic insufficiency, coagulopathy, and thrombocytopenia Maranella et al. and in both cases, newborns were 35 weeks premature, and one of the mothers had a clear 6-year history of substance abuse. It is difficult to determine if this is related to long-term exposure, exposure dose, or gestational age. More cases and related studies are needed to clarify the mode and mechanism of damage to offspring liver by prenatal METH exposure. Illicit drug abuse has increasingly become a public health and social concern, worldwide.

£1bn bust as Australia struggles with crystal meth emergency

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission found ice use in cities had overtaken rural areas in the latest National Wastewater Drug Monitoring study. ‘It’s just another item on the menu of a night out,’ drug counsellor Shane O’Neill told Daily Mail Australia. ‘Twenty years ago it would have been something on the fringes. Crystal meth is offered alongside weed, coke and MDMA from dial-a-dealer services delivering direct to partygoers wanting an extra kick to get them through the night.

Commodore Adrian Fryer, senior Royal Navy officer in the Middle East – and also Deputy Commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, said that once again the concerted international naval effort had delivered results, preventing “a significant quantity of illegal narcotics from reaching its destination”. The most recent haul exceeds the previous record haul from 2019, when HMS Defender discovered 131kg of crystal meth from a dhow sailing in the Gulf of Oman. The drugs, which have a wholesale value of £15.5 million according to the National Crime Agency, were discovered in a secret compartment of the vessel following the six-hour operation. The seizure led to the arrest of three men, aged 24, 26 and 34, who are all currently before the courts. A record-breaking stash of methamphetamine which equates to an astonishing 1.8 metric tons has been discovered in Australia.

meth seizure

The decreasing cost over time of the instruments coupled with simpler interfaces has enabled drug testing facilities to work at scale where typically a chief analyst oversees a group of technicians who run and maintain the instruments. This has enabled greater efficiency due to the speed of analysis which has a significant effect on the management of the analytical data. Typically forensic analytical laboratories have a bank of instruments supplied from the one manufacturer in order to aid the development of standard operating procedures and these flow eco sober house review on to the data analysis where complex automated data analysis is commonly employed. While for an individual case the reporting is focussed on the analytes of interest the broader collection of the data enables analysts to build more complete profiles of the illicit substances within their jurisdiction. As the focus of some aspects of chemical analysis leave the traditional laboratory environment and moves to point-of-care locations, such as the music festival, the portability and robustness of the analytical detection system becomes even more critical.

MILLIONS of pounds worth of drugs was seized by a Royal Navy warship from a frigate in the Middle East.

Hyperthermia is an acute effect of Meth and appears necessary but is not sufficient to cause monoaminergic damage (Bowyer et al., 1992, 1994; Xie et al., 2000). This is evidenced by the fact that Meth-induced monoaminergic terminal damage is not observed in rodents that are placed in a setting with low ambient temperature and do not experience Meth-induced hyperthermia (Bowyer et al., 1992, 1994). Furthermore, pharmacological interventions that attenuate hyperthermia also attenuate Meth-induced monoaminergic https://sober-house.net/ damage. For example, antagonism of NMDA receptors using MK-801 or D1 or D2 dopaminergic receptors using SCH23390 and haloperidol, respectively, prevents Meth-induced hyperthermia and toxicity (Bowyer et al., 1994; Albers and Sonsalla, 1995). In contrast, several studies suggest that hyperthermia is not the sole mechanism since pharmacological interventions that do not alter hyperthermia will attenuate Meth toxicity (Itzhak et al., 2000; Ladenheim et al., 2000; Callahan et al., 2001; Sanchez et al., 2003).

  • Selective blockade of mGlu5 metabotropic glutamate receptors is protective against methamphetamine neurotoxicity.
  • The discomfort sometimes causes patients to relapse in the hope of counteracting withdrawal pains.
  • Signs of psychosis include visual and auditory hallucinations, irritability, paranoia and intense scratching.

Environmental factors like early mother-infant separation may also increase susceptibility of offspring to METH abuse. Further studies are needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying METH-induced behavioral sensitization. The roles played by various brain regions in behavioral sensitization need to be established. The task is arduous due eco sober house price to limitations in behavioral sensitization-related testing and difficulties in defining quantitative standards. Nevertheless, behavioral sensitization may explain the occurrence of familial drug abuse and mixed drug abuse. Another cell type that interacts with endothelial cells and helps to maintain proper BBB function are pericytes.

There are group meetings, where you share experiences and listen to other recovering addicts. You’ll complete 12-step work programme and offer voluntary services like providing refreshment for group meetings. Meth is a highly addictive drug and mixing it with any other stimulant, psychedelic, hallucinogen or cannabis makes it difficult to complete detox and maintain sobriety, especially for long-term users. You can make a difference for yourself and your family if you seek help as soon as you turn to this drug. With addiction in the mix, all the elements of a successful relationship suffer.

These chemicals are also released during pleasant activities – like eating and sex – and they are responsible for making us feel alert and excited. ‘Behind closed doors, I was little more than a barely functional, emotionally crippled, alcoholic and drug addict. Raids on suspects linked to the drugs haul allegedly found another $300,000 in cash hidden in homes in Merrylands, Prospect and Rydalmere in Sydney’s west.

Traditional Illicit Substances

While HIV-induced increases in BBB permeability may not be the sole reason for immune cells and virus infiltration into the brain, HIV proteins act on BMECs and result in increased neuroinflammation. Therefore, HIV infection could exacerbate Meth-induced BBB damage. Stressors increase ROS (Mcintosh and Sapolsky, 1996; Leza et al., 1998; Madrigal et al., 2001), inflammatory mediators (Minami et al., 1991; Garcia-Bueno et al., 2008), mitochondrial dysfunction (Madrigal et al., 2001) and extracellular glutamate . As mentioned previously, these mechanisms contribute to Meth-induced BBB disruption in response to a variety of insults. Thus, it is likely that stress could exacerbate Meth-induced BBB disruption by potentiating Meth-induced increases in ROS, inflammatory mediators, mitochondrial dysfunction, and extracellular glutamate.

  • However, a prospective cohort study of 80 mothers and infants, indicated that METH discontinuous and/or sporadic consumption during pregnancy may have negligible transplacental passage and hence negative results in meconium analysis (Joya et al., 2016).
  • Never mix G with alcohol as these 2 substances interact and can lead to death.
  • Border force officers then examined a number of additional containers last week and located 1060kg of methylamphetamine concealed in the same marble stone method.
  • The base peak in all the mass spectra appears at m/z 214 and the generation of this ion was proposed showing how the mass spectral interpretation is important in understanding the chemistry of the molecules at hand because the base peak is the most stable fragment ion.

The point-of-care approach makes for an interesting focal point for the illicit drug analyst because it is placed squarely at the nexus between high-quality analytical science, public opinion, policing strategies and the legal system. As such the current environment for point-of-care approaches does vary considerably between different jurisdictions which allows for detailed comparison of the respective approaches. The work revealed that drug checking has the potential to help with harm reduction for users, based on the fact that the team found the majority of the samples contained harmful adulterants and novel psychoactive substances which would have led to complications for the user. From a detection point of view the study used Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to probe the samples of interest and coupled this approach with a targeted fentanyl immunoassay strip. The analysts performed 336 tests and coupled the results with the expectation of the user who noted that the illicit substances tested were likely to be psychedelics (69.3%) or stimulants (19.6%). From the psychedelic samples, a large proportion of 72.5% contained the expected substance, and 11.6% contained contaminants.

Methamphetamine is a serious international public health concern due to its high potential for addiction and the risk of long-lasting injury to multiple organs. Because of its anorexigenic and body-weight reducing effects, METH is in some cases used even during pregnancy to maintain body image. Additionally, its psychoactive and hallucinogenic effects greatly increase the risk of promiscuity and unwanted pregnancy. Mounting evidence indicates that prenatal METH exposure is rising (Marwick, 2000; Wouldes and Lester, 2019).

It is important to note that mass spectrometry is a particularly sensitive detection system and is universal due to the large number of molecules that can be ionised. Due to this, and the fact that mass spectrometry lends itself to coupling with chromatographic technology, it is a mainstay in illicit drug detection within forensic science agencies. Assessing prenatal exposure to METH is crucial for early recognition and treatment.