Fast quantitative LC-MS/MS determination of illicit substances in solid and liquid unknown seized samples

Narcotic and psychotropic substances are natural, synthetic or semi-synthetic compounds that are present in both solid and liquid illicit products. The alterations effects on the central nervous system related to their use can be psycholeptic, psycho-analeptic or psychodiseptic, and are able to generate tolerance, addiction or dependence phenomena, creating social and public order problems. In this scenario, the analytical evaluations that aim to determine these analytes in seized non-biological samples, and which assume the character of judicial evidence, must meet high analytical requirements of reliabil-ity, transparency and procedures uniformity at National level. For the first time in literature, the herein validated method is able to provide the simultaneous quantitative determination of 37 of the most common narcotic substances as well as the most commonly used excipients/adulterants found in seized illicit material. Additionally, the validated method can process both solid and liquid samples maintaining the precision and trueness levels (intraday and interday) in accordance with the International Guidelines (<14.31% and <13.41%, respectively). Furthermore, provide a simple and fast procedure for sample preparation using the "dilute and shoot" approach and exploiting the sensitivity and selectivity of the LC-MS/MS instrument configuration used and the signal acquisition in Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) mode (both positive and negative po-larization modes).