Because narcotics-related crimes pose critical risks to public safet y and national security, narcotics control has drawn attention of international community.A rapid and se nsitive detection of narcotics is the first step of narcotics control.The feasibility of optical identification of trace amounts of narcotics in serum using photo-induced delay ed luminescence (DL) is tested. Comparative investigations for the DL decay curves of control serum and contamin ated samples with methamphetamine and heroin were conducted.For the control serum without chemical contamination,the DL decay curve shows an intrinsic lifetime of about 38.4ms,while DL decay curv es of the serum containing 1×10－5 mol/L methamphetamine and 1×10－5 mol/L heroin reveal shortened characteristic lifetimes of 14.2ms and 11.9ms,respectively.On this basis,the lifetime values of mixing samples with different concentrations of methamphetamine are calculated,and we establish the corresp onding relation between lifetime with concentration.It indicates that DL can realize the quanti tative detection of methamphetamine in serum.Experimental results demonstrate that the lifetime can be used as an indicator of containing narcotics in serum,promising a new method for detecting trace amounts of narcotics in serum.