The drug 25I-NBOH, a new psychoactive substance (NPS), breaks down in the hot injector of a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS), a common forensic tool, creating misleading byproducts. The main breakdown product is 2C-I, with a smaller amount of an ortho-phenolic benzyl ether (o-PBE) whose exact form depends on the solvent used. Adjusting the injector temperature, split ratio, or flow rate did not prevent this thermal degradation. Thermal analysis showed that 25I-NBOH has a narrow temperature range between melting and decomposing, making it unstable. Derivatization successfully prevented the degradation, allowing accurate GC-MS analysis.
NBOMe derivatives are phenethylamines related to the 2C class of hallucinogens. Few human pharmacologic studies exist, but several intoxication cases and deaths have been reported. These compounds are not part of routine drug screening for many police forces, and no rapid immunoassay tests can detect them. For the first time, the voltammetric behavior of 25B-NBOMe and 25I-NBOMe was investigated, and their electroanalytical characteristics were determined. A novel, fast, and sensitive screening method was developed to identify these two most common NBOMes in real samples. The method uses electrochemical oxidation to produce an analytical signal related to concentration, with an average lower limit of quantitation of 0.01 mg/mL for both. It is selective enough to identify each compound individually despite their structural similarity.