A new technology allows law enforcement to track legal marijuana using DNA.
SigNify
Pot may be legal in Colorado, but that doesn’t
mean the state has no illegal pot. Legal growers have illegally sold
cannabis across state lines, and illegal growers can forge a paper trail
to enter the legal market. It’s a problem for law enforcement, which
needs to combat this gray market to keep the state’s $1.5 billion
cannabis industry on the right side of federal compliance. Starting this
summer, the state could be able to identify all aboveboard cannabis.
Using technology previously employed to track premium American cotton
from gin to shirt, growers spray their legal plants with DNA that acts
like a molecule-size encrypted bar code. By bonding to the plant—but not
changing its DNA—the tag withstands processing and even shows up in
refined products such as oils and edibles.
Dispensaries and local law
enforcement can then feed a tiny bit of a product into a reader, the
SigNify, that confirms the farm, strain, and permit number.
Biotech company Applied DNA Sciences produces the
tags. “Think of the DNA as a content carrier,” says Jim Hayward, company
CEO. The tags are engineered to embed up to 250 bits of identifying
information in the sequence of DNA nucleotides. This allows for billions
of potential DNA signatures for plants and manufacturers. To avoid
harming or affecting the plants, the tags are dissolved in water and
measure in the parts per trillion, and the spray uses minimal moisture
to eliminate risk of mold.
When a sample is placed in the SigNify, the device
uses a polymerase chain reaction to reproduce the tags for easy
identification. Because the contents of the tags are secure—Applied DNA
employees can access only portions of them—they can’t be copied. Which
means counterfeits can’t be made, and fewer illegal products can make it
into a legal system.
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