Douglas County Forensics Lab validates THC test, marking first law enforcement agency to prove test results
Douglas County’s Forensics Lab has validated a test to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana.
Both of those are cannabis. The only difference is that marijuana has a lot more THC.
For months, KETV Newswatch 7 has investigated the confusion over Nebraska’s new hemp law. Scientists worked for weeks to validate the test, which measures the amount of THC present in a sample. That's the chemical in cannabis that produces a high.
Forensic scientist Christine Gabig walked us through the process, weighing a 50 milligram sample of cannabis.
“The law says .3% THC is the maximum that the THC level can be, so we have to be able to tell that,” Gabig said.
Douglas County's forensics lab can with a newly validated test procedure.
"Labs across the country have been scrambling to get things in place because everybody's states are passing these laws,” Gabig said.
That law legalized hemp in Nebraska. But just by looking, one can’t tell the difference between the two.
Gabig tests them by adding a known solution to the cannabis.
‘We use something called an internal standard that means you add something to your sample that you know what the concentration is,” Gabig said.
“We found that we need to mix it for between 10 and 15 seconds,” she said.
It's mixed twice during a 10-minute period. Then it's taken to a machine that super heats the sample to find out what it's made of. It gives the results to scientists on a computer.
Gabig demonstrated the results by pointing to peaks on a graph generated by the computer.
“Here is our internal standard peak. So that peak represents 1% so you can see from this that the THC is more than 1% so that tells us then that this is marijuana,” Gabig said.
It’s called the 1% test and it's based off a model given to labs by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
“But then we had to adapt it to what we need here in Nebraska, for our laws, and what we can do in our labs,” Gabig said.
“We wanted to use the equipment we already had, didn't want to buy anything new,” she said.
It took about a month, but now the Douglas County lab determined their test can be used in court, showing a large binder full of evidence.
“This is all the data just from us working on studying if the procedure is going to work and proving that it really does work,” Gabig said.
Last month the University of Nebraska Medical Center said it could tell the difference between pot and hemp. They are the drug lab for the Omaha police Department and said the science has existed for decades.