Consensus document of the Study Group on Clinical Pharmacotoxicology and Doping of Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Italian Forensic Toxicologists Group (GTFI) – for laboratories involved in the determination of substances of abuse

The greatest workload for the laboratories performing pharmacotoxicological tests remains the routine activity for detection and measurement, in different biological matrices, of psychotropic substances such as opiates, cocaine, cannabinoids, amphetamines, methadone, buprenorphine and ethyl alcohol. In addition to the investigations requested for clinical reasons, the requests to the pharmacotoxicological laboratories may also include medico-legal investigations, whose variety and complexity contributed to the adoption of personalized and extremely diverse operating modalities implemented in the Italian laboratories. The purpose of this document is to provide the Laboratories of the National Health Service in Italy that are planning to carry out or that already perform determination of drugs of abuse for medico-legal purposes, with recommendations at national level that take into account the “good laboratory practices” recognized at the international level in order to perform accurate and precise analytical tests so that they can meet the requirements necessary to provide a high quality and legally unassailable service.