ing at the status of an increasing spread of illegal drugs which brings severe threats to public security in recent years, it is pointed that technologies of analysis and detection on illicit materials play a vital role in on-site screening and evidence extraction of illegal drugs related events. The application of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) detection in several typical illegal drugs, such as opiates, cocaines, amphetamines, ketamines, and so on, are summarized. Challenges for in-field and real time detection of illegal drugs are analyzed. The SERS is expected to be one of the most popular detection technologies due to its excellent performances, such as sensitivity, accuracy, simple operation, etc. The future development trend of the technology is predicted to be constructing high quality substrate with good robustness, exploring new surfactants and stabilizers, developing a new portable Raman spectrometer with a high signal-noise ratio, and developing intelligent recognition algorithm with good generalization.