Analysis of potassium permanganate as addictive drug "precursor"

Potassium permanganate is used for the production of cocaine and methylcathinone. The third convention of the UN against narcotic drugs (1988) contains a list of so-called precursors, substances commonly used for the production of narcotic drugs. The control of the precursors can be a very important step to prevent the illicit production of narcotic substances. A chemical characterization of a seized product may contribute to determine the origin of the producing company and the trade channels and to prevent further illicit deliveries. 31 samples of permanganate (19 authentic and 12 seized samples) have been analyzed for 9 metallic elements. Detailed procedures for the emission spectrography and ICP-analysis are given and the range of concentrations is tabulated. It was surprising that no significant concentrations of metals like chromium, nickel or cobalt were present. Nor was the difference between the technical and analytically pure products sufficient to make a differentiation according to origin. This is probably attributable to the technical manufacture of permanganate by electrolysis. All the statistical analyses of the results performed on the available data do not allow conclusions as to the country of origin or manufacturer, as production batches of one and the same manufacturer may also show differences. Only the morphology of the product (crystals, powder or "free flowing") allows a certain characterization. Nevertheless it seems necessary to analyze all seized samples for impurities and to establish a table of "impurity profiling" in the future in order to receive more information and to find correlations in selected cases.