A reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with dual optical rotation/UV absorbance detection has been developed for the determination of enantiomeric purity of ephedrine hydrochloride and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride using an achiral column. The method gave a correlation coefficient of 0.9997 for the plot of log(optical rotation response) versus log (concentration) over the range of 0.06-10 mg ml(-1) of (+)-ephedrine hydrochloride (20 microliters injection). The limit of detection was 1.0 micrograms. Enantiomeric purity is shown to be most readily determined by measuring optical rotation, alpha, and absorbance, A, responses for standard and unknown samples, and using the equation (alpha/A)u/(alpha/A)s = (2xu - 1)/(2xs - 1), where x is the mole fraction of one of the enantiomers and subscripts s and u refer to standard and unknown, respectively. In blind trials using unknown mixtures of (+)- and (+/-)-ephedrine hydrochloride and a (+)-ephedrine hydrochloride standard, enantiomeric purities were determined to +/- 0.4% (95% confidence level) with five or six replicate 50 micrograms injections. The method has also been applied to the determination of the enantiomer mole fraction of (+)-pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in a cough linctus, giving xu = 0.99 +/- 0.01 with seven replicate injections of 20-fold diluted linctus samples containing 7.5 micrograms of the chiral compound being assayed. Unlike conventional polarimetry, the method does not require chemically-pure samples and can be orders of magnitude more economical in material.