Figuring out the difference between hemp and marijuana isn’t easy and in an effort to make it easier on law enforcement, feds are issuing a $350k grant to an agency to help develop a method that can differentiate the two.
It was under the 2018 Farm Bill that hemp became federally legalized but it has bee increasingly hard for laboratories to determine whether cannabis seized by law enforcement contains THC in excess of 0.3%. Anything over 0.3% classifies the marijuana as still illegal.
The Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice said in the grant notice that was published earlier this month, “most forensic laboratories are currently lacking reliable extraction protocols and analytical methods for this purpose.”
The agency awarded $350,000 to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is part of the Commerce Department, in order to support efforts that “provide forensic laboratories with the neccessary analytical tools to confidently make these measurements through simple, robust, and cost-effective analytical methods.”
The notice further reads, “After method completion, this proposal includes a technology transfer focus from NIST to the federal state, and local forensic laboratories through standard operating procedures, training modules, webinars, and scientific publications.”
NIST has teamed up with the Maryland State Police (MSP) as well as the Montgomery County Police Department crime labs to obtain 125 cannabis samples to conduct their analysis.
The notice stated that “NIST will use the collaboration with MSP to allow for critical evaluation of the new analytical methods to ensure their applicability to meet forensic laboratory needs.”
It was this past July that NIST had said it was launching a cannabis testing program to help ensure that the products people purchase from retailers and dispensaries are accurately labeled.
