Identification and quantitation of 5-fluoro-ADB-PINACA and MAB-CHMINACA in dubious herbal products

Police officials brought three different packages of herbal blends, with brand names “AL 37”, “AP 31”, and “GM sapphire”, to our laboratory for drug testing. Using our in-house high-resolution mass spectrometric analysis, we were able to estimate the presence of 5-fluoro-ADB-PINACA and MAB-CHMINACA in them without their reference standards. After obtaining the reference standards, we compared the mass spectra of the extracts of the herbal blends with those of the reference standards using both gas chromatography–mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. The mass spectra of the herbal blend extracts coincided with those of the reference standards, disclosing the presence of 5-fluoro-ADB-PINACA in “AL 37” and “AP 31”, and MAB-CHMINACA in “GM sapphire”. We then quantitated the concentrations of both compounds in the herbal blends using the standard addition method. The concentrations of 5-fluoro-ADB-PINACA were 19.4 ± 0.55 and 19.0 ± 0.47 mg/g (mean ± standard deviation of triplicate determinations) for herbal product brands “AL 37” and “AP 31”, respectively, and that of MAB-CHMINACA was 133 ± 4.5 mg/g for the “GM sapphire” herbal product. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate the identification and quantitation of the newest synthetic cannabinoids 5-fluoro-ADB-PINACA and MAB-CHMINACA in herbal blend products.