Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
Benzoylecgonine is the primary metabolite of cocaine - it's actually just cocaine minus a methyl group. It's not really used as an intoxicant, but it does have one interesting use: figuring out just how much cocaine people are using.
One study in 2005 in Germany examined the total amount of benzoylecgonine in wastewater (a good chunk of cocaine-derived benzoylecgonine is excreted in urine). Their result suggested the proportion of cocaine users was substantially larger than the 8 per 1,000 previously thought.
Email this entry to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos for this entry
Comments
In the hexagon which contains the Nitrogen atom, there are three bonds (obviously, that's how it appears on the drawing). What are those exactly?
Posted by: Khalil A. | January 25, 2007 2:02 PM
Somebody doesn't know enough organic to fill a flea's navel. Cocaine, 8-methyl-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1]octane system (tropane).
Posted by: Uncle Al | January 25, 2007 6:18 PM
The six-membered ring subsystem (the hexagon) would be called "piperidine" if it were on its own. Since it's fused into another ring system (because of the five-membered nitrogen containing ring formed by those other two carbons) and the nitrogen has an extra methyl, it is a bigger ring system called tropane.
The three bonds coming from the nitrogen atom are all going to carbon atoms. Every vertex in one of these line drawings is a carbon atom - unless the carbon has multiple bonds (multiple lines) or a charge, it forms four bonds. The same is true for "N" being nitrogen, except it forms three when uncharged and only participating in single bonds. Every carbon has hydrogen atoms making up its remaining substituents. The two carbons bound to the nitrogen that are part of the ring, therefore, are -CH2-, or "methylenes", and the carbon bound only to nitrogen is -CH3, or a "methyl".
Hope that makes sense (and I didn't answer a question you weren't asking, I was a little unclear on what you meant!)
Posted by: MotD | January 25, 2007 8:12 PM
Alright Uncle Al, I don't know if you just haven't managed to find the right side of the bed to wake up on yet or not, but your comments generally seem to have about 100% more snarkiness than is actually required to explain chemistry. God forbid that someone who isn't that well acquainted with the subject express some interest in it.
Posted by: Jon | January 26, 2007 2:33 PM
Ah ok. Thanks MotD. And Jon, Uncle Al's comment is just ok too. I don't really care what he thinks. Wouldn't have posted the question if I did anyway.
Posted by: Khalil A. | January 27, 2007 1:25 PM
if some was hair tested 3 months ago and this drug and cocaine showed up in there hair and you had been using hard for the last 2 years then they did another hair test in less then 3 months and it still shows up and your hair is long but you haven't used in 3 months how can this be confrimed since it is still showing up positive
Posted by: dawn | August 15, 2007 8:57 PM
Is there another substance[s] that would mimic benzoylecgonine in the urine or possibly produce a false positive?
Posted by: jamie----corpus christi, Texas | September 20, 2007 10:35 AM