Stride Nielsen Louise, Villesen Palle, Lindholst Christian
Department of Forensic Medicine, Section for Forensic Chemistry, Aarhus University, Palle Juul-Jensens Boulevard 99, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark; Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, C. F. Møllers Allé 8, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, C. F. Møllers Allé 8, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Forensic Sci Int. 2017 Nov;280:194-199. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2017.10.007. Epub 2017 Oct 14.
Cocaine is usually trafficked from South America throughout the world in packages of approximately one kilogram shaped as bricks and imprinted with a logo. Seizures consisting of multiple cocaine bricks gives the opportunity to examine the variation in the chemical profile within cocaine bricks assumed to originate from the same manufacturer and maybe even the same production batch. This knowledge may be important to the forensic investigator when chemical profiles from cocaine samples of unknown origin are compared. In the present study, the alkaloid and residual solvent profiles from three large cocaine seizures each containing identical cocaine bricks was examined. The three cases consisted of 36, 84 and 100 cocaine bricks, respectively. Each cocaine brick was profiled according to its cocaine alkaloid and residual solvent content using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and headspace GC-MS. The study showed that each of the three identical looking seizures consisted of up to four groups of cocaine bricks displaying the same cocaine alkaloid and residual solvent profile. The size of the groups varied from 2.4 to 63.3kg cocaine. The study also showed that the residual solvent profile within each of the three large seizures exhibited very little variation whereas the alkaloid profile varied considerably more. This finding suggest that the same organic solvent is used for the production of several batches of cocaine HCl. Therefore, the residual solvent profile may be a tool to link different production batches from the same manufacturer even though the alkaloid profile are different.
可卡因通常以每包约一公斤的块状从南美洲贩运到世界各地，这些块状可卡因形似砖块并印有标识。查获的多块可卡因砖提供了一个机会，可用于研究假定来自同一制造商甚至同一生产批次的可卡因砖内化学特征的变化。当比较来源不明的可卡因样本的化学特征时，这一知识对法医调查人员可能很重要。在本研究中，对三次大型可卡因查获案件中的生物碱和残留溶剂特征进行了检查，每次查获的案件均包含相同的可卡因砖。这三个案件分别由36块、84块和100块可卡因砖组成。使用气相色谱 - 质谱联用仪（GC-MS）和顶空气相色谱 - 质谱联用仪，根据每块可卡因砖的可卡因生物碱和残留溶剂含量对其进行特征分析。研究表明，这三次外观相同的查获案件中的每一次都由多达四组可卡因砖组成，这些组显示出相同的可卡因生物碱和残留溶剂特征。这些组的可卡因重量从2.4公斤到63.3公斤不等。研究还表明，在这三次大型查获案件中的每一次内，残留溶剂特征变化很小，而生物碱特征的变化则大得多。这一发现表明，相同的有机溶剂被用于生产几批盐酸可卡因。因此，即使生物碱特征不同，残留溶剂特征也可能是将同一制造商的不同生产批次联系起来的一种工具。
