FORENSICS experts from Belfast are testing a faster way of detecting the drug
ecstasy in tablets. The new technique can also help identify where a particular
batch of tablets comes from, which should help the police catch dealers and
makers of the drug.
Currently it takes a day or more to identify a suspected ecstasy tablet, as
it has to be crushed, dissolved and then analysed by gas chromatography. But now
chemists at The Queen’s University of Belfast can show straight away whether an
intact tablet contains MDMA. They use a technique called Raman scattering, which
measures the spectrum of…
