Law-enforcement technologyBrazil uses chemical "fingerprints" to trace trafficked cocaine
Brazilian federal police have used chemical profiling to determine that cocaine is being trafficked into the country via new routes; they are now compiling the most comprehensive database of the chemical fingerprints of illicit drugs in South America, which will be used to pinpoint where the cocaine is originally made
Brazilian federal police have used chemical profiling to determine that cocaine is being trafficked into the country via new routes. They are now compiling the most comprehensive database of the chemical fingerprints of illicit drugs in South America, which will be used to pinpoint where the cocaine is originally made.
Wendy Zukerman quotes Claude Roux, professor of chemistry and forensic science at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, to say that while the chemical profiling of illicit drugs is not new, the machinery required for chemical analysis had been prohibitively expensive for most South American forensic laboratories.
Recent advancements in the technology — specifically in mass spectrometers — have made the equipment more affordable, however. Michael Collins at the National Measurement Institute in Australia says chemical profiling has become standard practice in the United States, Australia, and much of Europe and Japan, but South America’s adoption of the technology will be crucial to the war on drugs.
Approximately 65 per cent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States was originally made in south and Central America. The ability to link seizures to specific drug trafficking rings in the region will improve intelligence-gathering and help prosecute those responsible, says Collins.
Zukerman notes that cocaine usually reaches Brazil from its northern neighbors, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. The chemical profiles of 112 cocaine seizures in four Brazilian states in 2006, however, suggest that the drug is beginning to enter Brazil from Paraguay.
Jorge Zacca of the Brazilian Federal Police National Institute of Criminalistics and colleagues examined compounds in the seized cocaine called minor alkaloids, which are found in the leaves of the coca plant. The alkaloids change subtly depending on the species of coca, where it was grown, the age of the cocaine and how it was stored. The team also analyzed the solvents present in the drug as a residue of the purifying process.
The technique is “very effective for linking seizures,” says Zacca. Unfortunately, it cannot reveal the geographical origin of the drugs, so it is unknown if the drugs are being made in Paraguay, or being transported via new routes that go through the Paraguay from Peru or Colombia.
This is partly because there is no comprehensive database in South America to compare the chemical signatures of seized drugs with samples of known origins. Zacca is using the new chemical profiles to compile such a database.
Zacca presented the results at the International Symposium on Forensic Sciences in Sydney, Australia, earlier this month.
