Blotter acid

In the trunk, we "stow two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers,. .. a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."... 

Slang terms acid, barrels, battery acid, Berkeley blood. Big D, blotter acid, blue acid, blue microdot, chief, contact lens, HCP, sugar,sunshine, windowpane, Zen... 

U.S. Department of Justice. Drug Enforcement Administration. Diversion Control Program. Drugs and Chemicals of Concern d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD, acid, cid, blotter acid). August 2001 (January 24, 2002). . 

To understand the extraction of LSD from blotter acids for analysis. 

The process of analysis of LSD blotter acid follows the same general principles and sequence as for other controlled substances, namely physical description, presumptive testing, TLC and confirmatory analysis. These processes are discussed below. 

Plate 3.1 Bird of paradise pattern on LSD blotter acid, covering the whole sheet of the paper. Copyright Michael D. Cole, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, UK, and reproduced with permission. 

As with all forensic science analyses, the first stage in the process is a full physical description of the material under investigation. In the case of blotter acids, this includes a count of the number of dose units, the size of each of the dose units (length x breadth), whether they fit together, the number and depth of... 

Following the possible identification of the presence of LSD, the next stage in the analysis is the use of thin layer chromatography (TLC). This is employed because although it cannot be used to prove the identity of LSD, it can be used as a rapid, cost-effective method to eliminate those samples which gave a positive colour reaction in the presumptive tests but which do not contain this drug. These will be rarer when blotter acids are suspected, but may be more common where other substrates have been used as the carrier medium for the LSD itself. 

More recently, it has become possible to identify LSD in situ, without the need for extraction of the drug [6]. In this technique, LSD blotter acid is described (see... 

Section 3.2.1) and then subjected to a simple extraction procedure, followed by microscope FTIR spectroscopy directly on the extract. In this approach, the blotter acid is first soaked in water for 1 s, which swells the fibres of the papers and was found to facilitate the extraction of the drug for further spectroscopic analysis. The excess water was then removed from the blotter, which was subsequently placed on a KBr disc and heated to 120°C for 1 min. Dichloromethane/ammonia (100 1) was added to the blotter, which dissolved the LSD. The solution was then removed by using a microsyringe, placed on a KBr disc, and its spectrum recorded. 

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