Screening of synthetic cannabinoids in ‘Legal Highs’ samples by Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Abstract

Legal highs, especially synthetic cannabinoids, are novel substances which are intended to cause a cannabis-like effect, as an alternative to traditional illicit drugs, like Marijuana. These products are marketed without any safety testing, their number is quite huge and are always changing to bypass regulations. Therefore, the detection of these new compounds is an ongoing challenge for analytical screening methods. In the present work, nine e-cigarette liquids and four herbal blends samples were analyzed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to hybrid quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-(Q)TOF MS), performing a wide screening in order to identify synthetic cannabinoids. This technique provides a rapid and efficient answer by detecting and identifying such compounds, based on its valuable analytical performance as it delivers sensitive, full-spectrum MS data with high resolution and mass accuracy. Seven synthetic cannabinoids were found in herbal blend samples, but only JWH-019, JWH-081, JWH-203 and JWH-250 were finally identified through the reference standard. The most prevalent was JWH-081 (present in three out of four samples analyzed) and JWH-250 (present in two out of four samples analyzed). The remaining three compounds were tentatively identified, XLR-11, UR-144 and 5F-APINACA based on their fragmentation and related literature. Unexpectedly, no cannabinoids were found in the e-cigarette liquid samples.