Scientific and Technical Support Services

UNODC provides scientific and technical support services to all partners involved in drug control. These include drug testing laboratories and drug analysts, as well as their "customers" or "clients",which include law enforcement agencies, and judicial, health and regulatory authorities. Services are also provided to other institutions and individual researchers and students engaged in activities related to drug control at the national, regional and international level.

Scientific support services include:

To Drug Testing Laboratories:

  1. Material assistance to strengthen national capacity in drug testing and forensic expert services. Assistance includes the provision of:
    1. Laboratory equipment and materials (typically provided in the framework of scientific support projects);
    2. Standards/reference samples of drugs under international control, their metabolites, and precursors for comparative analytical purposes as well as reference samples of selected impurities found in illicitly manufactured drugs;
    3. Recommended analytical methods for drug and precursor testing and analysis, guidelines and other scientific and technical information and publications.
  3. Training courses to improve the analytical expertise and professional skills of drug analysts in methods for the identification and analysis of drugs in seized material and body fluids, as well as of precursors, including in a number of specialized areas, such as drug characterization and impurity profiling.
  4. An international quality assurance programme (IQAP) to assess and improve, when necessary, the performance of drug testing laboratories. The programme is open for participation of any interested national drug testing laboratory. IQAP is intended to harmonize the quality of work produced by national laboratories. IQAP's International Collaborative Exercises programme is aimed at helping drug testing laboratories worldwide assess their own performance and take corrective actions, when appropriate. As part of the programme, UNODC provides unknown test samples to participating laboratories for identification and analysis, authenticated reference samples to assist them in the performance of the analysis, and an overall evaluation of results.

To Law Enforcement, Judicial, Health and Regulatory Authorities:

  1. Drug and precursor identification kits for the rapid field detection of drugs of abuse and of a number of chemicals required for their production;
  2. A Multilingual Dictionary of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances under International Control, cross-referencing names, trade names, and various synonyms in six languages;
  3. Guidelines and Other Scientific Technical Publications
  4. Workshops for heads of national drug testing laboratories, law enforcement officials and other national laboratory counterparts, organized under projects for specific countries or regions. These workshops are aimed at promoting mutual understanding and close collaboration between all partners at national and/or regional level.

Applied Scientific Research

UNODC also coordinates and conducts applied scientific research. Current focus areas include:

  • Methods and approaches for the characterization and impurity profiling of major drugs and precursors;
  • Methodologies for the assessment of opium and coca leaf yield (as part of UNODC's Illicit Crop Monitoring Programme), and alkaloid content of illicitly cultivated crops;
  • Improved tests for the rapid field detection of drugs of abuse and chemicals required for their production.