Probing the APS bank of knowledge

[MillCreek]

Ah, this thread takes me back to writing my master's thesis back in 82 on the quantitative analysis of barbituates in urine using GC/MS.  Now, most of these tests are all automated: load the sample into the cassette, press 'test' and walk away.

[Ex-MA Hole]

I'm on a few rehab sites and this bath salt stuff can ROYALLY *expletive deleted*ck you up.  BAD, BAD, BAD stuff....

[RevDisk]

I'm on a few rehab sites and this bath salt stuff can ROYALLY *expletive deleted* you up.  BAD, BAD, BAD stuff....

Funny how the legal stuff is worse for you than the illegal stuff.

[brimic]

Skilled chemists can make synthetic cannabinoids that are not illegal but still have psychoactive effects just by changing a couple of molecules.

In a former place of employment, I used to run prep-HPLCs to purify Delta-9 THC that the guys in the lab next door made synthetically. On a shift I was yielding about 200gm of 99.5%+ Delta-9 which we then mixed with ethanol. The stuff smelled divine.

[brimic]

It's expensive, because the hair essentially is vaporized in a gas chromatograph. The machine is expensive, and it's labor intensive, because a lab tech has to walk through the whole process with each sample. Granted, computers do a lot of the heavy lifting and analysis now, but it's still some "real lab work".

The hair samples would probably run in a LC Mass Spec machine which cost upwards of $100,000 and usually need an attachment called a PhD level Analytical chemist to run which costs even more.
Yes, its very expensive and very labor intensive work.
We used to have a PhD Chemist from India who ran our LC-MS and GC-MS machines would talk your ears off for hours about how she did the analysis if you had time to listen. 

[Nick1911]

In a former place of employment, I used to run prep-HPLCs to purify Delta-9 THC that the guys in the lab next door made synthetically. On a shift I was yielding about 200gm of 99.5%+ Delta-9 which we then mixed with ethanol. The stuff smelled divine.

That's interesting.  Assuming that your process was stripping out aromatic esters, that implies that the THC-Delta-9 actually has a scent.  (Honest question) Is that true?

[brimic]

That's interesting.  Assuming that your process was stripping out aromatic esters, that implies that the THC-Delta-9 actually has a scent.  (Honest question) Is that true?

Yes, it had a nice smell to it.

Edit: It didn't hurt that it was mixed with ethanol either which has a very pleasant smell to me as well.
The THC smelled a bit like weak turpentine or pine-sol.