Near-IR spectroscopy can work for sample identification of organic compounds, but there are downsides with sample prep and interference from strong absorbers in the bands used, including water. The lenses and windows in the insurgents are made of IR-transmissive salt (often literally NaCl), which has to be kept dry and scratch free.
A better, and newer, option is to use Raman spectroscopy, which relies on the intrinsic molecular vibrations of a material (phonons) to shift the wavelength of interrogating light by a characteristic magnitude[1]. Once the Raman spectra is obtained, sample identification is a matter of finding the spectrum of the most similar compound in a database of known spectra. So in order to correctly identify something, it helps if it has been seen before and is present in the database.
Because Raman spectrometers are essentially a laser, some very narrow optical notch filters (band rejection at the interrogating frequency), and some fairly sensitive semiconductor detectors (often in the form of a mini spectrophotometer), the instruments can be made quite small. Some are even handheld and have integrated material databases[2].
The risks in this case aren't in not knowing what you have; it's not knowing what it does in your body.
Here is an org doing professional gas chromatograph work -- you can send them a sample of whatever drugs you've purchased plus $53 and they'll tell you what you have and the purity: https://medium.com/backchannel/inside-the-deep-web-drug-lab-... . If we actually cared about people who use drugs, we'd offer these sorts of services, and support orgs like dancesafe.
Just think if many recreational drugs were not illegal. You would have access to safe(r), rated products, open testing of products, knowledge about use (and abuse) out in the open.
You would not have to jail people for illegal drugs and destroy their lives - usually much more than the drugs ever did. You would not be funding criminals who own the market now. It could even be taxed.
It does not take to be a criminal to support "war on drugs" and the like. It's enough to be a bureaucrat.
According to Shirky Principle, "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution". Bureaucracy is very much about being a self-sustained and preferable expanding body. For that, it needs that the problem it is intended to solve to persist. If needed, it will sustain and even re-create that problem.
This is why we have so many forbidden and controlled things: so that those who check for compliance kept they jobs and could get a pay raise sometimes. And their jobs are not easy!
Note that this is not "evil" per se, there's no malicious intent, and the whole "war on drugs", much like the Prohibition 80 years before it, is entirely driven by (outwardly) benign, even noble motives.
Rather, this is a primitive form of life and natural selection. Life needs to self-sustain; its forms that fend off external threats better extend and persist. Any organization that had actually solved a problem it was built to solve has been disbanded, as something not needed any more. Any organization that offers solutions which perpetuate the problem is kept around to continue solving the problem.
This is (partly) why higher forms of life have a death trigger built in. Eukaryotes have telomeres. Similarly, presidents only have limited time in office. Problem-solving bodies should have something similar.
Do not trust the accuracy of any article that calls Ketamine a tranquilizer. It is not, it is an anasthetic. People who fail to do research commonly repeat this completely inaccurate belief.
"His design for MXE was more potent than its parent, ketamine, which is generally used as an anesthetic but is prized by users for its ability to deliver an out-of-body experience."
Repeating yourself doesn't answer my question as to what makes the statement wrong. The more interesting question to me is why there are so many sources, including many government documents, referring to it as a veterinary tranquilizer going back almost 50 years if it does not have that effect.
I fail to see why I should believe that it is only an anesthetic (never anasthetic, as you consistenly keep writing) and not a tranquilizer as well when I can find thousands of documents on .gov and .edu sites supporting its use as a tranquilizer. Surely you can come up with veterinary medicine documents that explain why it's not usable as a tranquilizer rather than making unsupported claims - since it's mentioned as a tranquilizer always in veterinary and not human contexts.
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[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 57.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-infrared_spectroscopy
I suspect a lot of naive users would end up measuring the pill coating.
A better, and newer, option is to use Raman spectroscopy, which relies on the intrinsic molecular vibrations of a material (phonons) to shift the wavelength of interrogating light by a characteristic magnitude[1]. Once the Raman spectra is obtained, sample identification is a matter of finding the spectrum of the most similar compound in a database of known spectra. So in order to correctly identify something, it helps if it has been seen before and is present in the database.
Because Raman spectrometers are essentially a laser, some very narrow optical notch filters (band rejection at the interrogating frequency), and some fairly sensitive semiconductor detectors (often in the form of a mini spectrophotometer), the instruments can be made quite small. Some are even handheld and have integrated material databases[2].
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_spectroscopy
2. http://www.thermoscientific.com/content/tfs/en/product/trusc...
Here is an org doing professional gas chromatograph work -- you can send them a sample of whatever drugs you've purchased plus $53 and they'll tell you what you have and the purity: https://medium.com/backchannel/inside-the-deep-web-drug-lab-... . If we actually cared about people who use drugs, we'd offer these sorts of services, and support orgs like dancesafe.
You would not have to jail people for illegal drugs and destroy their lives - usually much more than the drugs ever did. You would not be funding criminals who own the market now. It could even be taxed.
At some point in the future, this will happen.
According to Shirky Principle, "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution". Bureaucracy is very much about being a self-sustained and preferable expanding body. For that, it needs that the problem it is intended to solve to persist. If needed, it will sustain and even re-create that problem.
This is why we have so many forbidden and controlled things: so that those who check for compliance kept they jobs and could get a pay raise sometimes. And their jobs are not easy!
Note that this is not "evil" per se, there's no malicious intent, and the whole "war on drugs", much like the Prohibition 80 years before it, is entirely driven by (outwardly) benign, even noble motives.
Rather, this is a primitive form of life and natural selection. Life needs to self-sustain; its forms that fend off external threats better extend and persist. Any organization that had actually solved a problem it was built to solve has been disbanded, as something not needed any more. Any organization that offers solutions which perpetuate the problem is kept around to continue solving the problem.
This is (partly) why higher forms of life have a death trigger built in. Eukaryotes have telomeres. Similarly, presidents only have limited time in office. Problem-solving bodies should have something similar.
"His design for MXE was more potent than its parent, ketamine, which is generally used as an anesthetic but is prized by users for its ability to deliver an out-of-body experience."
The NHTSA labels it as a veterinary tranquilizer as well - http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/keta...
People without training conflate the two.