A method for identifying the manufacturer of sleeping pills used in crime via the analysis of pharmaceutical additives

Abstract

 Crimes using sleeping pills with malice are occuring continuously. Although it is essential to identify the brand name of sleeping pills in criminal investigations, the recent diffusion of generic drugs has led to a problem that the brand name of the sleeping pills used by suspects cannot be narrowed down from the identification of the active ingredients only. To solve this problem, we have tried to develop a method for identifying the manufacturer of a sleeping pill by analyzing the pharmaceutical additives in left-over beverages. Etizolam tablets 0.5 mg which are manufactured by 16 pharmaceutical companies were selected as the objects of study. The powdered Etizolam tablets were mixed into water and beverages and then discriminated whether the pharmaceutical additives are contained or not with six analytical methods, including Pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. As a result, it became possible to identify almost all of the pharmaceutical companies via a combination of contained pharmaceutical additives. This analysis method to identify the pharmaceutical companies by analyzing the pharmaceutical additives is the first attempt in our extension research. We think that this method can be applied to many other medicines, and expect that this method can contribute much to identifying or narrowing down suspects.