Introduction: Amphetamines are a group of drugs stimulating the central nervous system; they act on the cerebral cortex to enhance psychic activities, resulting in the removal of general fatigue and drowsiness and thus in the transient improvement of working efficiency. Their abuse causes dependence, hallucination, delusion and changes in personality. Because of such harmfulness of the drugs, their use and possession are prohibited by the Stimulant Drugs Control Law in Japan [1]. The recent methamphetamine (MA) abuse is characteristically involving young generation, and causing a serious social problem; it is regarded as the 3rd peak period of MA abuse [2] | 2 Amphetamines and their metabolites By Nariaki Takayama and Kazuichi Hayakawa Introduction Amphetamines are a group of drugs stimulating the central nervous system they act on the cerebral cortex to enhance psychic activities resulting in the removal of general fatigue and drowsiness and thus in the transient improvement of working efficiency. Their abuse causes dependence hallucination delusion and changes in personality. Because of such harmfulness of the drugs their use and possession are prohibited by the Stimulant Drugs Control Law in Japan 1 . The recent methamphetamine MA abuse is characteristically involving young generation and causing a serious social problem it is regarded as the 3rd peak period of MA abuse 2 . The drug is being smuggled from China Korea Peninsula and the so-called Golden Triangular Zone 3 where borders of Myanmar Thailand and Laos are intercrossing. The stimulant drugs include amphetamine AP 1-phenyl-2-aminopropane MA 1-phe-nyl-2-methylaminopropane and their salts. As an ethical drug for treatment of depression only MA hydrochloride commercial name Philopon is available from Dainippon Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. Osaka in Japan. Most of MA being abused is the one smuggled from abroad. In the Stimulant Drugs Control Law dimethylamphetamine DMA 1-phenyl-2-dimethylam-inopropane deprenyl N-a-dimethyl-N-2-propynylphenethylamine ephedrine phenylpropanolamine racemic norephedrine methylephedrine chloroephedrine chloromethylephedrine phenylacetic acid phenylacetoacetonitrile phenylacetone are also being controlled as materials for producing MA or AP Figure . Unchanged MA its metabolite AP and p-hydroxymethamphetamine pOHMA a are usually detected from urine of MA abusers. Recently the abuse of DMA a material for producing amphetamines has been reported DMA is partly metabolized into MA AP and pOHMA which are excreted into urine together with unchanged DMA 4 5 . Therefore it is now essential to test the presence of DMAb for urine of .
