FINGERPRINTING TECHNOLOGY COULD IDENTIFY MARIJUANA

New Tool Would Track Movement of Pot Destined For Illicit Markets,
Scientists Say

DNA fingerprinting technology might soon lay to rest any fears that
Canada's newly approved medical marijuana could easily be funneled
into illegal street sales.

For the past few years, law-enforcement research scientists in the
United States, initially aided by their RCMP colleagues in Canada,
have been developing a way to genetically fingerprint pot.

The research, discussed in today's edition of the British magazine New
Scientist, has taken a plant gene identification technology originally
created for patenting strains of corn and rice and expanded it to
identify strains of marijuana.

"One of the things that we had thought would be a great application
was if you keep a fingerprint file of the legal stuff and then compare
it to the illegal stuff. Then you could definitely see if someone was
moving it around in a way which was inappropriate," said Heather
Miller Coyle, a research scientist with the Connecticut State Forensic
Science Laboratory.

There is no way at present for officials in this country to determine
when and if medical marijuana has been sold into the illicit market,
Health Canada spokeswoman Jirina Vlk said.

The American research team is eager to remedy that by adding the DNA
fingerprint of Canada's medical marijuana to the growing database. "We
certainly would be happy to process and house the samples for our
database and return the results to Canada. And if that sounds like a
solicitation, it is, because it is," Ms. Coyle said in an interview.

While fingerprinting pot may one day be used to track the flow of
medical marijuana, there are other more immediate applications.

"I have already been asked about a case where a joint has been left at
a murder scene, and a suspect had been found with marijuana on him. .
. . With fingerprinting, you could see if they came from the same
plant, and that would be pretty good evidence for even a criminal
trial," said Gary Shutler of the Washington State Patrol's crime
laboratory division.

Mr. Shutler was formerly with the RCMP's Forensic Laboratory Service
in Winnipeg where pure strains of marijuana were grown by Winnipeg
police for use in officer training.

He provided those varieties to the U.S. researchers, who used them to
perfect the new fingerprinting technology. "But the day I left
[Winnipeg], the project was shut down," Mr. Shutler said, blaming
budget cuts.

Another possible application for the technology might be called
criminal epidemiology. Law enforcement officials should be able to
determine how much U.S. pot actually comes from Canada -- in
particular, British Columbia, which has an illicit marijuana industry
worth between $1-billion and $6-billion. Without a lot of hard data,
it has been estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of the marijuana found in
the United States is so-called "B.C. bud."

The new fingerprinting technology is close to being applied. Earlier
this year, the scientists published a paper showing that it's possible
to extract a DNA fingerprint from a tiny amount -- one-tenth of a
joint's worth -- of pot.

"It's not in the courtrooms yet, but we are close," Ms. Coyle said.