Rotted Cannabis Plants – New Forensic Aspects

Eran Fenigshtein, DIFS - Division of Identification and Forensic Science, Israel Police, Jerusalem, Israel

A simple and elegant method was developed for the analysis of a liquid phase of cannabis plants. Approximately 60% of all cases examined in the analytical lab of the Israeli police DIFS consist of cannabis products.

The need for this method was raised because defense experts, who weighed only the vegetable traces and not the liquid phase, claimed that the liquid phase does not contain the properties and active ingredients of cannabis and thus the weight of that liquid phase should be subtracted from the total sum that was weighed in the analytical lab.

The aim of this research was to proof the assumption that the liquid phase is a cold extract of the cannabis plant, and that it contains the properties and active ingredients of the cannabis plants.

Although the legal status of this liquid is similar to a solution of drugs, and in the case of cannabis plants, it is prohibited as a part of the cannabis plant, there is importance to develop a simple and useable method for analyzing the liquid phase.

The method is based on a simple extraction method, and by applying the current methods for analyzing cannabis, we proved that the liquid phase in rotted cannabis does possess the properties and active ingredients of cannabis.