DOI: 10.36347/sjmcr.2017.v05i04.016

Pages: 280-281

A 20-year-old man who was accompanied by another man who was sitting in the passenger seat, bumped into a guardrail while driving a car at low speed. When the emergency medical technician checked them, the passenger regained consciousness and refused to be transported to a medical facility. A cinder was observed on the vehicle’s dashboard. The driver remained unconscious and was transported to our department. Upon arrival, he had a Glasgow Coma Scale of E3V4M6 and his pupils were 2 mm in in diameter. A physiological examination revealed no remarkable findings. The same cinders that had been observed on the vehicle’s dashboard were found attached to his clothes. He regained clear consciousness but had a complete loss of memory in relation to the traffic accident. As he refused to undergo clinical examinations and studies, the local police arrested him based on the suspicion that he had been using designer drugs. The police could not reveal information about the case, including the results of a drug test that had been performed by the Crime Laboratory Center. Instead, Hoshi University perform an analysis of the cinder attached to his clothes. As a result, AB-CHMINACA (N-[1-amino-3-methyl-oxobutan-2-yl]-1-[cyclohexylmethyl]-1H-indazole-3-carboxamide), which was an indazole-based synthetic cannabinoid, was detected. In Japan, no commercially-available screening tests for synthetic cannabinoids are available in general hospitals. A commercial system that can be used to detect the use of synthetic cannabinoids is required in Japan. Alternatively, the Crime Research Center should analyze samples from general hospitals and inform clients of their results.