Suicide with the veterinary drug acepromazine.

A suicide case involving the veterinary drug acepromazine is described. After a single-step liquid alkaline extraction, acepromazine was identified in a chest-cavity blood sample using gas chromatography (GC) with nitrogen-phosphorus (NPD) and mass selective detectors. Acepromazine was then quantitated in the blood and other postmortem tissues by GC with NPD using chlorpromazine as the internal standard. Acepromazine concentrations in the chest-cavity blood, liver, brain, and bile were 0.6, 3.0, 0.4, and 6.5 micrograms/mL, respectively. The stomach contents contained a total of 2.5 mg acepromazine.