Articles
Beware of blotting paper hallucinogens: severe toxicity with NBOMes (2015)
- He had three seizures before arriving in the ED, where his Glasgow coma scale score was 9. He had a fourth seizure about 1 hour after presenting, and was given 5 mg midazolam intravenously.
- NBOMe assays are not currently part of routine emergency toxicology testing; worldwide, only a few forensic and commercial laboratories offer qualitative NBOMe testing in blood or urine.
- NBOMes (N-methoxybenzyl) are synthetic psychedelics. There are a number of different NBOMes, including 25B-NBOMe and 25C-NBOMe. While they belong to the same drug type, their chemical structures have differences.1
- 25B-NBOMe was detected in the blood specimen at a concentration of 0.089 μg/L, 22 hours after ingestion.
- Dimethoxyphenyl-N-[(2-methoxyphenyl)methyl]ethanamine derivatives (NBOMes) are a novel class of potent synthetic hallucinogens originally developed as 5-HT2 receptor agonists for research purposes, but which have become available as recreational drugs in the past few years.3 They are available under a number of street names, including “N-bombs”, and are often sold as “acid” or “LSD” on blotting paper, as a powder, or as blue tablets (“blue batman”).
- The state government criminal forensics staff has performed gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) analyses in order to determine the chemical composition of the blotters. During the evaluated period, there was a considerable increase in the seizing of blotters events, from 87 in 2011, to 301 in 2016 and reaching 277 in 2017. There was also an increase in the number of blotters seized per event. Interestingly, while in 2011, 100% of blotters contained LSD, this number decreased to 0,1% in 2014, and achieved 17,6% in 2017, when up to 25 different substances were detected in blotters seized. Drugs such as DOx, NBOMe, fentanyl, mescaline derivatives, triptamines, cathinones, and synthetic cannabinoids were detected and became the major substances found in blotters.