Jacob D - 25-12-2012 at 23:07
Some of you may be familiar with companies such as Dancesafe and EZTest that sell drug test reagents. These reagents are applied to alleged samples of
popular recreational drugs with the intent of verifying if they are the real chemical or an imposter. The reagent is applied to the drug in question
and will turn a certain color if it is real. Some of those commonly sold include the Marquis, Mandelin, and Simons reagent.
I have used and even prepared some of these reagents myself over the last 3 years. I can say from personal experience that they work reasonably well
at identifying various drugs.
However, I still do not understand how they actually work!
Let's use the Mandelin reagent as an example. It is a mixture of 100ml Conc. H2SO4 and 1g of ammonium vanadate.
If this mixture is applied to a small scrapping of MDMA, the reagent fizzles and turns a dark bluish black color.
However if the reagent is applied to small scrapping of ketamine, the reagent fizzles and turns a red color.
What are the actual reaction products here? What functional group makes a reaction product black as with MDMA versus red as with ketamine?
Thanks! I've been lurking here for awhile. This forum has an awesome presence of brilliant chemists and I hope that this is a meaningful first post!