The analytical and chemometric procedures used to profile illicit drug seizures - a review

Over the last 20 years there has been an increasing interest in the development of robust systems, both analytical and statistical, to enable the linkage of seizures of illicit drug to each other. Much of this work has concentrated on the analysis of synthetic drugs, such as amphetamine and its analogues. In recent years, the analysis of both organic and elemental impurities as well as isotope ratios has advanced the usefulness of the techniques available. The application of specific chemometric methods to the derived analytical data has begun to provide the possibility of robust methods by which the resultant information can be interrogated.