In Portugal, commercialization of synthetic cathinones has been
outlawed since 2013 and subject to strict control by the police and,
therefore, samples of the seized substances are regularly submitted
to the forensic laboratory for identification. Recently, GC-MS
analysis of three seized products (A, B and C), presented as white
powders, revealed chromatograms with one major peak, with the
corresponding EI spectra showing no molecular peak and the same
fragment base peak at m/z 112. However, sample B and C shared
a compound with a common retention time (RT = 4.796 min)
different from the one of sample A (RT = 8.289 min) (Fig. 2).
Comparison of these data with GC/MS databases preliminarily
identified the three samples as MDPBP (1), which clearly could not
be the case due to the different retention times. In order to obtain
a standard of MDPBP, synthesis of this cathinone was undertaken,
following literature procedures for other a-pyrolidinophenones