Detection of pharmaceuticals in “dirty sprite” using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry

Abstract

Dirty Sprite, also known as “lean” or “purple drank”, is a preparation associated with the presence of codeine and promethazine. These drinks, predominantly used by young people, are mixtures of, for example, soft drinks, prescription medicines, and prescription cough syrups. The use of these illicit preparations started in Texas in the 1960s and become popularized in the 1990s. However, the misuse of these cocktails has become more common in other countries to date, for example, in Thailand. Given the illicit nature of these preparations and the lack of information available on the composition of these products, there is a need to identify and quantify the drugs that may be present. Three samples of Dirty Sprite were analyzed using GC–MS after liquid/liquid‐extraction under acidic and basic conditions. Since the acidic extraction did not show the detection of relevant substances, samples were alkalized to pH ≥ 9, followed by extraction with 1‐chlorobutane. GC–MS screening revealed the identification of codeine, dihydrocodeine, promethazine and impurities of cocaine. A selected ion monitoring method was developed for the quantification of these compounds using lemonade as a calibration matrix. Quantitative analysis showed concentrations of 130‐mg/L codeine, 75‐mg/L promethazine, and 3.4‐mg/L cocaine in sample 1; 74‐mg/L promethazine and 91‐mg/L dihydrocodeine in sample 2; and 130‐mg/L codeine combined with 68‐mg/L promethazine in sample 3. The results also illustrate that the consumption of drugs detected in Dirty Sprite samples could lead to health risks given that these prescription medicines are consumed outside the medical environment.

A stir bar sorptive extraction device coupled with a gas chromatography flame ionization detector for the determination of abused prescription drugs in lean cocktail samples

“…The extraction efficiency of the developed method (85.0–94.9%) is in a similar range or better than that of the other methods. The limit of detection was either comparable to that reported by Juhascik et al , 28 Hamid et al 27 and Rosenberger et al 33 or better than that reported by Njuguna et al 26 and Nishikawa et al 30 from previous reports. Additionally, the extensive linear range for each analyte indicates the feasibility of analyzing lean cocktail samples.…”

“…26 In addition, the proposed extraction method used a small volume of organic solvent which is also less than those of other reports. 26,28,29 The total extraction time of our method was 35 min, which is longer than that required in liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) as reported by Njuguna et al, 26 Nishikawa et al 30 and Rosenberger et al 33 However, an emulsion is obtained by the liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) method. The extraction time of the proposed SBSE method is faster than PDMS coated SBSE as reported by Crifasi et al 31 The extraction time of our method (35 min) was nonetheless sufficient to simultaneously extract all the analytes of interest.…”

“…Several methods for analysis of tramadol, promethazine, chlorpheniramine, dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine have been reported, using spectrophotometry, [5][6][7][8][9] high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), 10 gas chromatography (GC), 11 capillary electrophoresis (CE), 12 and electrochemical techniques. 13 However, these reported techniques have some limitations.…”

“…Accordingly, sample preparation is required prior to analysis to pre-concentrate the analyte and to eliminate interferences from sample matrices. The development of sample preparation techniques has been reported for the pre-concentration and extraction of main prescription drugs and some additive drugs, such as the dilute-and-shoot procedure with an appropriate solvent, 14 liquid–liquid extraction (LLE), 11 liquid phase microextraction (LPME), 15 dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME), 16 and solid-phase extraction (SPE). 17 Among these methods, stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) has attracted much attention for applications in extraction procedures, due to its high effectiveness in extracting non-polar and medium-polarity compounds from liquid samples.…”

Addressing the challenges in forensic drug chemistry II

“…These so‐called “dirty sprite” drinks are offered for sale and labeled to contain pharmaceutical substances promethazine and codeine. Interestingly, the authors report detections of cocaine, codeine promethazine, and dihydrocodeine 20 …”