The USA is in the midst of an opioid crisis that included over 60,000 overdose fatalities in 2017, mostly unintentional. This is due to excessive use of prescription opioids and the use of very strong synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, mixed with illicit street drugs. The ability to rapidly determine if people or packages entering the country have or contain drugs could reduce their availability, and thereby decrease the use of illicit drugs. In an effort to address this problem, we have been investigating the ability of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to detect trace amounts of opioids on clothing and packages. Here, we report the measurement of codeine and fentanyl at 100 ng/mL for 5 min on a pad impregnated with gold colloids, as well as a preliminary measurement of 500 pg of fentanyl on a glass surface using one of these pads. The calculated limit of detection for this measurement was 40 pg. This data strongly suggests that these pads, used with portable Raman analyzers, would be invaluable to airport security, drug raids, crime scenes, and forensic analysis.
Keywords: Raman; SERS; codeine; fentanyl; forensics; opioid detection.