This perspective reviews the potential for stable isotope labelling to examine the metabolic transformations of drugs. The increased sensitivity and widespread availability of modern nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and high‐resolution mass spectrometers will increase the application of stable isotopes to study drug metabolism. Creating mass doublets by mixing a natural isotopic abundance compound with a labelled isotopomer and applying stable isotope filtering to high resolution mass spectrometry allows one to rapidly identify drug metabolites in very complex samples, such as blood or urine. Applying this approach to drug metabolism will require a significant synthesis effort. The relatively small number of 13C, 15N, or 17,18O‐labelled precursors exacerbates this problem, making the synthesis of the labelled drug often more difficult than that of the parent compound. We have developed new strategies for stable isotope labelling of complex molecules based on the rich chemistry of [13C]methyl phenyl sulfide, where the phenylthio group acts as a stable, non‐volatile carrier for the valuable 13C‐label. For example we have used [13C]methyl phenyl sulfide to prepare the three possible 13C‐isotopomers ([1‐13C]‐, [2‐13C]‐, [1,2‐13C2]) of the two carbon precursors, ethyl 2‐(phenylthio) acetate and ethyl N,N‐dimethyl oxamate. In each case, these two‐carbon labelling precursors are asymmetric and the differential reactivity of the carbons allows for either/or 13C‐labelling in the products. We demonstrate the utility of these two carbon precursors in the synthesis of aromatic ring‐labelled N‐(4‐hydroxyphenyl)acetamide (acetaminophen or paracetamol). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.