A number of N-alkyl indole or indazole-3-carbonyl analogs, with modified chemical structures, are distributed throughout the world as synthetic cannabinoids. Like synthetic cannabinoids, cathinone analogs are also abused and cause serious problems worldwide. Acute deaths caused by overdoses of these drugs have been reported. Various analytical methods that can cope with the rapid changes in chemical structures are required for routine analysis and screening of these drugs in seized and biological materials for forensic and clinical purposes. Although many chromatographic methods to analyze each drug have been published, there are only a few articles summarizing these analytical methods. This review presents the various colorimetric detections, immunochemical assays, gas chromatographic–mass spectrometric methods, and liquid chromatographic–mass spectrometric methods proposed for the analysis of synthetic cannabinoids and cathinones.

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Recently, various synthetic cannabinoid (SC) compounds that have been slightly modified at the functional groups have been identified in Japan. However, the structural elucidation of these new compounds using conventional approaches such as gas chromatography-electron impact-mass spectrometry (GC-EI-MS) is difficult. As such, indole and indazole SCs were scanned using GC-MS-EI, positive GC-chemical ionization (CI)-MS, and negative GC-chemical ionization-MS, allowing for efficient structural elucidation of unknown SC compounds. Pure substances have been employed for the study.

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