Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jul 2003
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Copyright: 2003 Associated Press
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/27
Author: Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press writer

DNA DATABASE TRACKS POT TRAFFICKING

MERIDEN, Conn. -- State forensic scientists are compiling a DNA database to
track the nation's marijuana distribution network. It is built upon two
principles: Genetic material does not lie, and drug dealers always grow the
most potent marijuana possible.

In three years scientists at the state Forensic Science Laboratory have
mapped the genetic profile of about 600 marijuana samples taken from around
New England. As the database expands, scientists foresee a new way for
investigators to trace the drug from grower to smoker.

Using a single marijuana bud seized anywhere in the world, police would be
able to quickly deduce whether a suspect is a homegrown dope dealer or part
of an international cartel.

The success of the DNA database hinges upon a cultivation technique drug
dealers use to keep only the best, most potent marijuana on the street.

Waiting for marijuana seeds to grow into plants takes too long for
high-level dealers who move thousands of pounds at a time, police say.
Instead dealers usually plant cuttings from their most potent plants.

That results in a shorter growing period and ensures top-quality drugs in
every harvest. But it also means an entire marijuana crop is comprised of
just a few plants, cloned over and over. Genetically those plants are
identical.

An officer who makes a drug bust in Connecticut might normally have no idea,
however, that the pot came from the same harvest as a load seized on a
California highway.

While small-scale marijuana operations are local, top-level drug cartels are
international. Breaking up a basement drug business is often as easy as
getting one buyer to confess. Infiltrating a major drug cartel is not so
simple.

"It's next to impossible, unless you have a good informant, to know the size
of that kind of an organization," said Sgt. Lilia Gutierrez, a narcotics
officer in El Paso, Texas, where authorities in February seized 12,000
pounds of marijuana coming across the Mexican border.

A few months before that bust, federal agents in San Diego, Calif., seized
10 tons of dope in what is believed to be the largest marijuana bust in
history.

"Relatively few of the drugs that cross into San Diego remain in San Diego,"
said Michael Turner, special agent in charge of the city's Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. Turner said marijuana that
crosses the California border can turn up in cities like Detroit and
Chicago.

The database being developed in Connecticut is not nearly complete enough to
begin tracking that effect. But Heather Miller Coyle, a Connecticut forensic
scientist, said the state plans to request a renewal of its $340,000 federal
grant early next year. If the grant continues, she hopes federal agencies
will begin sending their samples for analysis.

"We are seeing correlations," Coyle said. "Correlations between individuals
and correlations between locations."

Research assistant Eric Carita is responsible for bringing the genetic
signatures into a searchable database. On his computer screen each sample
looks like a stock market chart, punctuated with distinct peaks and valleys.

A computer program converts that plot into a long, unique string of ones and
zeros. If the computer matches that number to one already in the system, the
samples are identical.

Officials hope the effort will pay off in the courtroom. A court case
pending in Connecticut Superior Court will be the state's first attempt to
get marijuana DNA admitted as evidence. Police have not laid out the details
of that case, but scientists say DNA data suggests that two drug operations
were actually part of one organization.

Coyle said she hopes that courtroom acceptance of human DNA evidence will
make it easier to introduce plant DNA data. Scientists can even print out
the DNA plots from Carita's computer and show a judge or jury that two
samples are identical.

There are hurdles. While a genetic match can nearly guarantee that a suspect
was at a crime scene, a plant DNA match does not by itself prove that two
growing operations are related. When combined other evidence, however,
officials hope DNA data can help eliminate reasonable doubt.

"If they keep cloning (pot plants), there's no way around this," Coyle said.

The DNA mapping technique cannot be used to track more dangerous designer
drugs like cocaine and heroin. Though both are plant-based narcotics, drug
synthesis isolates the mind-altering chemicals and the organic material is
eliminated.

Forensic experts believe efforts like this represent the future of forensic
science, which for years have been focused on the analysis of human evidence
like blood, semen and hair.

"We don't know all of the frontiers yet," said Kenneth E. Melson, president
of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the U.S. Attorney for
Virginia. "As our experience and capabilities increase, forensic science can
be used any number of areas we haven't even thought of yet."

Not everyone is convinced that marijuana dealing should be the cutting edge
of forensic science.

"It's a huge, monumental waste of taxpayer dollars," said Allen St. Pierre,
executive director that National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana
Laws Foundation.

Law enforcement officials, however, believe a genetic database could give
police another advantage over creative drug dealers, who have concocted some
ingenious growing and trafficking techniques.

"Certainly, if they're able to do enough fingerprinting to tell that this
load came from same field as another load, we can begin to show patterns and
trends," said Turner, the federal agent.

"If they could do it, it'd be one more tool in the arsenal."
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