U. TECHNOLOGY ENABLES DEA TO TRACE THE ORIGINS OF DRUGS

Drug agents may seize cocaine arriving in Miami, but often they are
uncertain where the narcotics originated. Even knowing where the
smuggler set out isn't enough.

A shipment could have been grown in Colombia or simply funneled
through cartels there. Cocaine is cocaine, indistinguishable one batch
from another -- that is, until now.

Today, an innovative laboratory at the University of Utah is able to
check the chemical "fingerprint" of drugs and determine with amazing
precision where the illegal crops were grown.

The same technology, perfected in the laboratory of biologist James R.
Ehleringer, can detect the origin of counterfeit notes or tell whether
the ancient Anasazi of southern Utah used reservoirs to grow their
corn crops.

It can sniff out adulteration in food, showing whether that sweet
taste in imported honey is the real stuff or cheap corn syrup added
in. It can even show whether the destruction of rain forests in Brazil
is contributing to the greenhouse effect.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is so impressed that it is
building its own laboratory based on the U.'s and may hire away a top
technician for the facility.

"If we have better knowledge of where illicit drugs in this country
are coming from, we can allocate our limited resources to combat this
threat," said Bob Klein, research supervisor at the DEA's Special
Testing and Research Laboratory in McLean, Va.

The DEA has acquired the instruments to analyze isotopes and is
working to get the lab operational. That should be by this summer.
"We'll be analyzing probably about 6,000 samples a year," Klein said.

By testing contraband, the DEA will better know which areas to target
for eradication. And the information will inject science into the
debate over whether to certify particular countries as in compliance
with the war on drugs.

ALL THIS IS POSSIBLE through the analysis of the ratio of isotopes,
which are chemically similar variants of common elements. Ordinary
atoms like oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen can have different isotopes,
depending on the number of their neutrons. The particular isotopic
makeup is determined by the environment.

During a tour of the lab on the fifth floor of the Skaggs Biology
Research Building, Ehleringer and technician Mike Lott showed how they
separate mixtures into molecules so they can be analyzed by a mass
spectrometer. Samples are drawn out by syringe.

The mass spectrometer indicates the exact makeup of the molecules. For
example, it tells researchers how many atoms in a sample are
hydrogen-1 and how many are the much rarer hydrogen-2.

Last week, samples in small glass flasks were lined up waiting to be
fed into the mass spectrometer. Labeled according to where they were
collected, the tubes and bottles contained air and water from sites in
Brazil.

The mass spectrometer, which does its work inside a long metal
cabinet, was labeled "BIG DOG." It is truly the heavy lifter of the
field, drawing experts from around the country to study the Utah technique.

"Basically, what we're trying to understand is the extent to which the
rain forest is a sink or a source of carbon dioxide," Ehleringer said,
indicating the sample tubes for the present experiment. The following
week, the machine may analyze something as exotic as fossilized bones.

Jean Ometto, a Brazilian from Sao Paulo and one of the researchers in
the study, noted that the Amazon rain forest is one of the most
important biological systems. It contributes greatly to the world's
supply of fresh oxygen, as its plants take in carbon dioxide and give
off oxygen.

But when the forest is burned to clear land for farming, the carbon
locked in plant vegetation is released back into the atmosphere as
carbon dioxide.

"We're interested in carbon cycle and water cycle in tropical forest,
so we sample air and water vapor from forest and pasture environments
in the Amazon region," Ometto explained. The results will show the
level of carbon dioxide released into the environment.

Samples are analyzed both in Utah and in Brazil.

According to Ehleringer, that study may help scientists understand
whether the Amazon Basin is contributing to the greenhouse effect,
which may be triggering global warming.

During a talk last Wednesday at the Little America Hotel, he said the
mass spectrometer can detect minute differences in atomic weight among
isotopes, as small as 0.0001 percent to 0.00001 percent.

"Natural variations occur because of chemical processes, because of
biological processes, because of physical processes that
discriminate," Ehleringer said. Some processes favor isotopes of one
type over a sister that is slightly heavier or lighter.

Sample sizes needed for analysis are minute, he said. They are 1 or 2
milligrams, "equal to about 10 grains of salt."

In detecting the source of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills,
nicknamed the "super note," the lab checked on isotopes contained in
cotton used to make the fake currency.

The scientists were able to determine that an early group of the bills
came from Eastern Europe. Later editions had isotopes "absolutely
consistent with the region that starts in the eastern Mediterranean
and ends in Afghanistan," he said.

Working with the DEA, Ehleringer tested ratios of various isotopes in
illegal cocaine and heroin. The drug agency provided samples from
known resources, labeled only with a code known to the DEA.

The blind test showed that "our predictability is between 90 and 95
percent" in identifying the country that grew the drugs.

The DEA's Klein said the agency learned of Ehleringer because of the
Utahn's work tracing explosives and fake currency. "We were very
favorably impressed," he said, and agency experts wondered if the
technology could be expanded to trace illicit drugs. Ehleringer has
"really proven the viability of the technique."