Forensic doctor Gabriel Horun says that after 2010, when the phenomenon of psychoactive substances known as ethnobotany exploded, Romania and other European countries began to face difficulties in detecting this type of substance through specialized tests, according to News.ro.

The doctor explains that 800 new psychoactive substances have been identified at the European level, of which only a quarter can be scientifically identified. According to him, Romanian laboratories can identify only about 50 such substances.

Forensic doctor Gabriel Horun explained that starting in 2010, Romania, which in 2008-2009 used three modern laboratories for drug identification, began to face, like other European countries, problems related to identification, especially in biological samples, substances known to the public under the name of ethnobotany.

“The sudden phenomenon, since 2010, at least in Romania, has taken on a new development due to the appearance of new psychoactive substances that are poorly defined as ethnobotanicals by non-specialists, because these new psychoactive substances represented a real challenge for global toxicology, not only for Romania. These were completely new substances, substances created by artisan chemists, so to speak, not traditional products, and all the time there was a lag behind the scientific and technological capabilities of the official systems in identifying new substances that chemists produced and introduced into work. black market Practically, the devices we have – since nothing has changed compared to 2009 – are not able to isolate these new psychoactive substances,” said doctor Gabriel Horun on Tuesday evening on Medika TV.

According to him, there are problems at the European and even global level regarding the identification of most psychoactive substances created in the laboratory and sold on the black market. Existing machines in laboratories can only identify about a quarter of them.

“The European Anti-Narcotics Monitoring Center in Lisbon currently monitors more than 800 new psychoactive substances circulating on the European black market, of which specialized research and laboratory studies have allowed the creation of identification methods for about 200. Thus, in any case, about 600 are absent in the scientific and technical availability, which must be determined. However, even the 200 that we have, we cannot certify their presence in biological samples on that equipment,” the doctor noted.

Gabriel Horun explained that if the identification of the substance is easier on the body of the criminal, then a psychoactive substance is affected in the biological sample. (News.ro)

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