Abstract
In this study, research was carried out using analytical devices used to detect illicit drugs that threaten public health. Articles on detecting illicit drugs worldwide were reviewed in the last five years. In 2022, one in 18 people, or approximately 292 million people, had used illicit drugs in the past year, and this number has increased by more than 20% considering the past decade. Approximately 30 million people used amphetamines, and 60 million people used opioids in the past year. Drug use, especially opioid use, remained the largest global burden of disease. Wastewater-based epidemiology is an innovative and promising discipline that has recently been used for individual biomonitoring and estimating the amount and type of illicit drug use in the population. Many disciplines, including analytical chemistry, physiology, biochemistry, sewage engineering, spatial epidemiology, statistics, and pharmaceutical/public health epidemiology, are used to estimate the prevalence of illicit drugs and their metabolic products in wastewater. This study aimed to review the articles on the detection of illicit drugs in wastewater, determine the most used analytical devices between 2017-2023, present a summary of the devices used for illicit drug detection, and provide a quick overview of the literature.