Thermal analytical techniques applied to the narcotic field: cocaine analysis.

The cocaine sold in the illegal market is normally a mixture of cocaine with different kinds of cuts. For legal purposes, it is compulsory to know the exact quantity of cocaine present in each sequestered sample, while at the same time it is important to know the type of cuts used. The analytical methods commonly used are not very reliable and take a long time. In this paper, the use of thermoanalytical techniques is suggested for the direct analysis of cocaine and cuts without any preliminary sample treatment, thus avoiding artifacts due to the sample pretreatment or to the analytical operative conditions. The proposed method is time saving and reliable with a maximum analytical error of the order of about 4%, while the mean error is of the order of about 2%.