Chemical Profile of Drug Infused Papers Seized in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) Prisons During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affected several business segments due to the lockdown period, including the illicit drug market. As Brazil usually imports new psychoactive substances (NPS), it was expected that their traffic would change during the pandemic. This study aimed to characterize NPS infused in pieces of paper seized inside prisons in the State of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil, during the COVID-19 pandemic by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and high-resolution mass spectrometry. All samples were identified as synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists, with indole-indazole structures. It was the first record of methyl (2S)-3,3-dimethyl-2-(1-(pent-4-en-1-yl)-1H-indazole-3-carboxamido) butanoate (MDMB-4en-PINACA), N-[(2S)-1-amino-3,3-dimethyl-1-oxobutan-2-yl]-1-butylindazole-3-carboxamide (ADB-BUTINACA), and N-(1-adamantyl)-1-(4-fluorobutyl)indazole-3-carboxamide (4F-ABUTINACA) in RJ, demonstrating that new NPS still arrived despite the lockdown. The integration of the data obtained via this study enabled the unequivocal identification of NPS even in the absence of standard reference materials, which is a common drawback faced by forensic laboratories in the analysis of NPS.