I am Eleázar Vargas Mena, an African-Colombian chemist, enthusiastic about impactful social work in underserved communities, and a Ph.D. student seeking to translate scientific findings into language understandable by people of all ages and academic levels

Purpose: In this work, 300 samples voluntarily donated at electronic music festivals in different cities in Colombia were analyzed by GC-MS) looking to visualize chemical profiles, groupings, and theoretical pharmacological interactions between the set of drugs tentatively annotated.
Methods: 5 mg of each sample was extracted with 1 mL of methanol containing tetracosane 0.1 mg/mL as internal standard, vortexed for 1 min, and sonicated for 15 min. After centrifugation for 10 minutes, the supernatant was transferred to a clean vial for analysis. Xenobiotics were tentatively identified using retention time, fragmentation profiles, and probability-based matching with the NIST library and certified reference material. Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) were assessed computationally by checking metabolism, physical properties, adverse outcome pathways, and antagonist or synergistic interactions for each significant xenobiotic.
Results: Colombian “tusibi” contains caffeine (stimulant) as the main cutting product added intentionally, present in 93% of the samples, followed by acetaminophen (16%), phenacetin (9%), and lidocaine (7%). Ketamine and MDMA were present in 78% and 69% of the samples respectively. CNS stimulants ethylpentylone (60%), methamphetamine (34%), 2C-B (18%), and cocaine (18%), were the majoritarian group of drugs found in the samples. Benzodiazepines, classic hallucinogens, opioids, and antidepressants were found to be less extended as part of the cocktails.
Conclusions: No single or pure drug was found in this analysis; all samples were mixed as a cocktail of drugs. There is a significant difference in the profiles and relative amounts of NPS between and among different music festivals. No grouping associated with them was observed, this could be due in part to artisanal preparation processes, and the dealer´s technical and academic background.
The main pharmacological interactions were associated with increased toxicity by increasing sympathomimetic stimulation and depression, and adverse events ranging from hallucinations, anesthesia, and tachycardia, to stroke, renal failure, and sudden cardiac death.