Marijuana grown in the Goldstream Valley
north of Fairbanks. Police officers found more
than 400 plants at the scene a few years ago.
Credit: UAF Police Department Investigator Steve Goetz.
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
Police officers don’t often get a straight story when they ask a driver where he got that bag of marijuana under his car seat. In the near future, they might be able to ask the marijuana itself.
Using a process called stable-isotope analysis, Alaska scientists have been working with law enforcement officials to trace marijuana to the area in which it grew.
Matthew Wooller is one of those scientists. He runs the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where researchers break substances down to their chemical elements to learn where they came from. Wooller went to a conference in New Zealand a few years ago where a scientist lectured about using stable isotopes to track people and counterfeit money, to sniff out the source of explosions, and to find the sources of illegal drugs. The talk inspired him.
“When I was flying back to Alaska, I thought, ‘I’d love to do an Alaska forensic drug study,’” he said.