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      What is the future of illicit drug profiling in Switzerland? Condemned to disappear or forgotten treasure

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          Abstract

          Illicit drug profiling bears a long history. Developments in the field from mid‐90s have led to several international profiling programs. Several countries have put their efforts to develop and implement the routine use of illicit drug profiling in the investigation and prosecution of illicit drug‐related crimes. For more than 20 years, the School of Criminal Sciences (ESC) at the University of Lausanne has, through its illicit drug expertise laboratory, played a main role in promoting the use of illicit drug profiling. In Switzerland, there is no national illicit drug profiling practice and the ESC laboratory is the only one offering such service. However, only a limited number of Swiss jurisdictions send regularly all or part of their seized specimens for analysis to the ESC laboratory. Profiling results are furnished to investigators and prosecutors regardless if they have been requested or not and are stored in a database with limited contextual information with no further data treatment. In 2020, the interruption of a project intended to develop and implement an intercantonal database gathering traditional police data, forensic data (e.g., DNA, fingerprints, etc.), and physical and chemical links, to produce intelligence and support investigation, led to the fundamental question: Is illicit drug profiling in Switzerland condemned to disappear or is it a forgotten treasure, a neglected approach that deserves to be revalued? This paper reports the Swiss situation regarding illicit drug profiling practices and discusses some factors that are thought to impact its use in day‐to‐day work.

          Abstract

          Illicit drug profiling is a widely applied process used for intelligence purposes. In Switzerland, there is no national illicit profiling practice, and its current use and usefulness is questioned. Is this since almost 30‐years used practice condemned to disappear or is it a forgotten treasure.

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          Most cited references33

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          A methodology for illicit heroin seizures comparison in a drug intelligence perspective using large databases.

          To characterise links between different illicit drugs chemical profiles, various distance or correlation measurements are available.Different comparison methods have been tested and a method based on a correlation coefficient using a square cosine function was chosen to compare heroin chemical profiles. Its functioning and graphical representation are described. An assessment of the number of false positives is calculated and lead to a negligible number.Moreover, it emerges from the studies that possible variations in impurity peak areas subject to possible degradations do not influence the C correlation value nor question the already established links. This solid, reliable and simple method appears therefore suitable for heroin samples comparison, links profiling and routine use.
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            The differentiation of fibre- and drug type Cannabis seedlings by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and chemometric tools

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              Review of the most common chemometric techniques in illicit drug profiling

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                susanna.meola@unil.ch
                Journal
                Drug Test Anal
                Drug Test Anal
                10.1002/(ISSN)1942-7611
                DTA
                Drug Testing and Analysis
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                1942-7603
                1942-7611
                10 October 2021
                March 2022
                : 14
                : 3 , Addressing the challenges in forensic drug chemistry II ( doiID: 10.1002/dta.v14.3 )
                : 411-415
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] School of Criminal Justice University of Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland
                [ 2 ] Forensic Science Service Criminal Police of Valais Sion Switzerland
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence

                Susanna Meola, School of Criminal Justice, University of Lausanne, Batochime, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.

                Email: susanna.meola@ 123456unil.ch

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8367-7487
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1933-2788
                Article
                DTA3167
                10.1002/dta.3167
                9293460
                34587372
                3b8b294e-602c-4f17-ad95-18e7ab631aeb
                © 2021 The Authors. Drug Testing and Analysis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

                This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

                History
                : 19 September 2021
                : 01 March 2021
                : 20 September 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 0, Pages: 5, Words: 4240
                Categories
                Special Issue ‐ Perspective
                Special Issue ‐ Perspectives
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                March 2022
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_JATSPMC version:6.1.7 mode:remove_FC converted:18.07.2022

                illicit drug profiling,intelligence,investigation,swiss context,usefulness

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