Legalizing a not-so-straight flush
How many times has this happened to you? You get up early, hoping to be the first one to the sewage treatment plant so you can get the really fresh wastewater samples. But when you get there, all they have is frozen.
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Or maybe you’re part of the research team that analyzed the wastewater of Tacoma, Wash., to determine marijuana usage before and after it became legal in the state. In that case, you’re used to the frozen stuff. Those scientists spent 3 years looking for THC-COOH, which is produced when the psychoactive THC in cannabis is metabolized in the human body, to determine if users were switching from the illegal to the legal market.
Turns out they did. THC-COOH in wastewater increased by 9% per quarter from December 2013 to December 2016, while sales increased by nearly 70% per quarter from Aug. 1, 2014, when legal sales went into effect, to December 2016.
“Given that wastewater represents a total population measure, these findings suggest that many established users switched very quickly from the illegal to the legal market,” team leader Dan Burgard, PhD, of the University of Puget Sound, said in a written statement. “This is the strongest statement possible regarding displacement of the illegal market.”
And the frozen samples? Over the course of the study, the investigators made 387 trips to the two sewage treatment plants. We’ll let MyNorthwest.com explain the rest: “The scientists would pick up a cooler full of frozen wastewater samples, thaw them, and analyze them using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.”
Mmm, frozen sewage. Who says science isn’t glamorous?
