. BIOTECHNOLOGICAL STUDIES ON HE DEGRADATION OF SOME NARCOTICS USING CLEAN METHODS

Abstract

Since the beginning of early civilization, narcotic drugs were used and started to be widely spread, so that no nation is entirely free from drug addictions, and consequently endanger nation's civilization. Therefore, countries in the whole world applied laws by force to control drug dealing and to restrict using narcotic drugs, with applying all possible ways to arrest drug dealers and to eliminate or seizing narcotics.

This led to problems of finding safe way(s) to destruct seizing narcotics, because the common method used to destruct such materials was burning the narcotics either by direct flame or by incineration, which endanger the surrounding environments and exposing the personall in charge to its hazard impact. This led the Commission of Narcotic Drug Experts (CNDE) at UNDCP to recommend using alternative safe and cheap ways such as biological or chemical or both in destructing narcotics.

Therefore, this thesis aimed to find out a safe way to destruct narcotic drugs by using either a biological or a chemical method replacing the direct burning method used in Egypt, with examining if the degrading materials produced from such alternative method(s) have any biological hazards on living organisms.

In the case of using biological method, bacteria were isolated from a rotten hashish material on a nutrient agar. The isolated bacteria were tested to utilize the active component in the hashish material, by growing such bacteria on a minimal medium containing the extracted active material of hashish as the sole carbon source in the medium. Non of the tested bacteria was able to grow on such medium, indicating a negative result of using such method to destruct hashish.