The Lake County Crime Laboratory (Painesville, Ohio) recently received a submission of eight round, blue tablets imprinted with a logo of two females back-to-back and four round, purple-speckled tablets imprinted with a logo of an automobile, and a separate submission of another one of the blue tablets, all suspected Ecstasy. The first set of tablets were acquired in Lake County (approximately 40 miles east of Cleveland) by an unnamed police department (no further details). The single tablet was also seized in Lake County, but by a different police department (also unnamed), incidental to a traffic stop. Both sets of tablets were approximately 8 millimeters in diameter and 4 millimeters thick. Analysis of the blue tablets (approximately 300 milligrams each) by color testing, GC/MS, and FTIR, however, indicated not MDMA but rather diphenhydramine. Analysis of the purple-speckled tablets (approximately 365 milligrams each) by the same techniques indicated a 3 : 1 mixture of diphenhydramine and caffeine. In both cases, the loading of the diphenhydramine was fairly high (not formally quantitated). These are the first submissions of Ecstasy mimic tablets containing only diphenhydramine or a diphenhydramine/caffeine mixture to the laboratory.
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