Services
Drugs of abuse
LGC's drugs services cover all types of drugs
of abuse and all the different ways they can be analysed.
Routine services are bundled together into
packages for specific purposes providing rapid, cost effective
analysis and interpretation. Such services include
identification, weight and purity analysis to support simple
possession cases and test purchase operations and revealing drugs
concealed in various everyday items.
In more complex enquiries, and reflecting our
full service status, we offer a wide range of additional types of
support. These include site visits to cannabis grow rooms and
suspected illicit laboratories, and enhanced analysis in the
laboratory to identify new types of drugs or to explore links
between drug seizures and establish chains of supply.
Analyses are used sequentially on a mix and
match basis to suit the needs of individual cases and to keep costs
down. They include full drug profiling to identify adulterants
and cutting agents as well as principal drug components, and
examination and analysis of drug packaging.
Packaging can provide particularly powerful
links between drug seizures, and people and places - augmented by
other types of evidence such as DNA, fingerprints, clothing fibres
which may be associated with it.
Also available from LGC Forensics are Home
Office approved training courses designed to enable police
personnel to carry out screening tests for commonly encountered
drugs, and a variety of other courses on, for example, how to
recognise different types of drugs and take the best samples for
analysis. LGC Forensics also regularly publishes drugs trends
statistics and other information and advisory bulletins.