When confronted with a marijuana muffin gifted by a friend or a possible undercover police officer, how can you be certain that it contains authentic marijuana? Fortunately, a report called Identification of Cannabinoids in Baked Goods by UHPLC/MS outlines a straightforward method for identifying marijuana in baked goods with "minimal sample preparation and no chemical derivatisation". The report was written by Guifeng Jiang and Jason R Stenzel and commissioned by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc in San Jose, California, where Jiang is employed. Stenzel works for the Crime Laboratory Division of the Washington State Patrol in the remote town of Cheney.
With "minimal sample preparation," Jiang and Stenzel refer to their method of identifying marijuana as minimal compared to the traditional forensic lab technician’s method of using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify cannabinol, cannabidiol and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which are the most well-known ingredients of marijuana and hashish.
"Minimal sample preparation" is the exact opposite of what professional forensic lab technicians use when testing the genuineness of leaf marijuana, hashish, hash oil, and what they lovingly call "residue collected from smoking paraphernalia".
Jiang and Stenzel prefer using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (UHPLC/MS) to traditional methods as UHPLC/MS provides more accurate results and is less time-consuming. One variety of UHPLC/MS system manufactured by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, the Accela UHPLC system, proved useful when Jiang and Stenzel identified marijuana in baked goods.
Jiang and Stenzel put their method to the test by analyzing marijuana brownie and cookie samples. They then crumbled them, added methanol, vortexed the mixture, allowed it to settle, filtered it through a cotton-plugged Pasteur pipette and centrifuged it at high speeds for 90 seconds. The sample mixture was analyzed using Thermo Fisher’s Xcalibur 2.05 software and the MSQ Plus single quadrupole LC/MS detector.
Individuals who come into contact with purportedly marijuana-containing cakes, breads, buns, doughnuts, tarts or pies can utilize Jiang and Stenzel’s method to identify if the baked goods indeed contain marijuana if they have access to the specialized laboratory equipment that was used in the report.
