New Drugs Test Can Detect Cocaine Users From Their Fingerprints
When it comes to the war on drugs, law enforcement will seemingly stop at nothing to catch people who use them, whether it’s for the use of marijuana or cocaine.
A recent development in the world of drug detection will make life for cocaine users a lot more difficult. Cops can now tell if someone has used cocaine by taking their fingerprint.
Researchers at the University of Surrey are the pioneers of the new fingerprint testing, which can determine if a person has ingested cocaine, as well as those who may have handled it.
An advanced analytical chemistry technique known as “mass spectrometry” is used to analyse people’s fingerprints against saliva samples to determine whether the two tests correlate.
One of the lead researchers who helped to develop the method, Dr. Melanie Bailey, said, “When someone has taken cocaine, they excrete traces of benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine as they metabolise the drug, and these chemical indicators are present in fingerprint residue.”
Bailey added, “For part of the investigations, we sprayed a beam of solvent on to the fingerprint slide to determine if these substances were present. The technique has been used for a number of forensic applications, but no other studies have shown it to demonstrate drug use.”
The new fingerprint drug testing is far better in many ways than traditional testing methods such as blood counts and urine tests.
Dr. Bailey said, “The beauty of this method is that, not only is it non-invasive and more hygienic than blood testing or saliva, it can’t be faked. By the very nature of the test, the identity of the subject is captured within the fingerprint ridge detail itself. We are only bound by the size of the current technology.”
She concluded, “Companies are already working on miniaturised mass spectrometers, and in the future portable fingerprint drugs tests could be deployed. This will help to protect the public and indeed provide a much safer test for drugs users.”
[Image credit: en.wikipedia.org]
