Question 1
Sample # 1:
Schedule IV. An example of a potential drug in this schedule is valium. Some of the symptoms that may be seen in conjunction with this drug include severe withdrawal, slow speech and movements, changes in eating habits, shaking, and loss of coordination, excessive sleepiness, and frequent somnolence.
Sample #2:
Schedule III/IIIN. An example of a drug in this schedule is Codeine. Some of the physical and psychological symptoms associated with this drug include withdrawals, addiction and dependence, depression, psychosis, delusions, psychosis, constipation, itching, rashes, dizziness, dry mouth, memory loss and low blood pressure
Sample # 3:
Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. An example of a potential drug in this schedule is heroin. Some of the symptoms associated with the use of this drug include hallucinations and withdrawals, shortness of breath, constricted pupils, weight loss, amenorrhea in women, deceptive behaviors, sleepiness, droopy appearance, loss of interest and disorientation.
Question 2:
Chromatography
The major benefits of chromatography are that it allows drug separation from their diluents, flexibility in the distinction of drug samples, provides a wide choice of mobile phases and has minimal drug sample clean-up (Siddique, AlOthman & Rahman, 2013, p. 4). Its main drawbacks are that it provides only tentative drug identification and also that its application requires the drug analyst to possess sufficient knowledge of the drug whose identity is to be compared or tested.
Mass Spectrometry
Some of the benefits of using this identification technique are that it can separate and identify similar chemical drug compounds, has high sensitivity and selectivity levels and also helps in eliminating the need for derivatization in drug identification (Fisher, Tilstone, & Woytowicz, 2009). The only drawbacks associated with this method are that it does not identify molecular ions in drugs and hence may lead to inaccurate results.
Spectrophotometry
The benefit of using this technique is that it uses a photomultiplier that has very high and resolution levels. This drug identification method is disadvantageous in that it only leads to the establishment of a probable drug identity hence does not provide conclusive results. It only works with very pure drug substances hence impurities in a drug sample may affect the accuracy of its identification results.
Microcrystalline Tests
The main benefit of these tests is that they accurately identify the range of substances in a drug sample hence making it possible to classify the drug under the controlled substances schedule. However, their only limitation is that they may fail to identify all the range of chemicals present in a drug sample.
Color Tests
These tests are beneficial in that they can identify a wide variety of drug and psychoactive substances using a variety of reagents at the same time (Cuypers, Bonneure & Tygat, 2016). Their only drawback is that there are high risks of false positives.
References
Cuypers, E., Bonneure, A.-J., & Tytgat, J. (2016). The use of presumptive color tests for new psychoactive substances. Drug Test Analysis Journal, 8, 136-140. doi:10.1002/dta.1847
Fisher, B. A., Tilstone, W. J., & Woytowicz, C. (2009). Introduction to criminalistics: The foundation of forensic science. Burlington, MA, San Diego, California & London: Elsevier.
Siddiqui, M. R., AlOthman, Z. A., & Rahman, N. (2013). Analytical techniques in pharmaceutical analysis: A review. Arabian Journal of Chemistry, 30, 1-13. Retrieved June 30, 2016, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.arabjc.2013.04.016
