The FRIIME project addresses the question: ‘Can the intramolecular stable isotope composition be used to enhance the Forensic Intelligence capabilities to track the origin of home-made explosives and psychoactive substances?’ In the battle against the illicit drugs market, methodologies have been developed to address origin determination and trafficking route dismantlement for various scheduled molecules: this is the concept of drug profiling. Profiling methods can rely on synthetic impurities, residual solvents, etc. In FRIIME, the same objective will be pursued but using the powerful intrinsic marker of the isotopic content of the molecules in question. In recent years, stable isotope strategies have proved to be a valuable resource in various forensic fields, including explosives and illicit drugs. However, these prior studies were conducted using isotope ratio measured by Mass Spectrometry (irm-MS), which only allows the isotopic characterisation to be applied to the whole molecule of interest. FRIIME, by resorting to a cutting edge isotopic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methodology, will investigate the position-specific distribution of isotopes in two common explosives, two well-known cutting agents used with illicit drugs and one new psychoactive substance. Isotopic 13C NMR will be applied to target molecules in order to refine the data obtained by irm-MS, as has already been demonstrated for counterfeiting of medicines. Furthermore, isotopic 15N NMR will be developed as a very pertinent contribution to the analyses of explosives. By collecting a larger number of parameters characteristic of the studied products than are currently obtainable, a new strategic and tactical paradigm will be made available to Law Enforcement Agencies enabling models of greater sophistication and predictive power to be developed, including the origins of raw materials and chemical reaction pathways used to manufacture targeted products. FRIIME is an ambitious and breakthrough project proposing a new approach made possible by uniting analytical chemists specialised in isotope analysis with scientists specialised in forensic applications. Innovative spin-offs from FRIIME can be expected in the following areas: • Rationalization of the connection between forensic science and intelligence-led policing: more data on position-specific isotope, 13C and 15N composition of home-made explosives (ammonium nitrate and urea nitrate) from different manufacturing processes, on psychoactive drugs (meta-chlorophenylpiperazine) , and on different cutting agents (caffeine, phenacetin). These data will serve to build refined models with which to combat crime. • An improved, more robust methodology through the high-precision isotopic characterization of a drug or an explosive for determining the origin of the raw materials and/or the manufacturing process used. • A protocol for isotopic NMR that can be adapted to other forensic fields, such as the environment (ground water or soil contamination), food control and toxicology, or counterfeit medicines. • Applications of a new instrumental methodology to other research domains: metabolomics, fluxomics and isotopomics. The success of the FRIIME project requires the interaction of scientific skills in quantitative NMR, Isotope Analytical Chemistry and Forensic investigation. To fulfil its purposes, FRIIME is built as a Collaborative Research Project associating two public partners: 1) the academic research team of the Isotope Analysis Group (EBSI) of CEISAM (Nantes), providing its innovative NMR platform, and 2) the French Police Forensic Institute: INPS (Lyon), providing a long-term experience in illicit drug profiling, including the use of its own irm-MS. Thanks to its expertise and experience in the areas of illicit drugs and explosives, INPS is in a unique position to provide a collection of real samples, thus guaranteeing an operational outcome, in accordance with the expectations of the law enforcement agencies.