Multimedia Listing

Presenters provided an overview of some of the more unique concealment methods utilized by drug traffickers, as well as some of the sampling and extraction methods used to prepare these submissions for analyses. They also discussed trends associated with counterfeit tablets containing fentanyl seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ National Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 26, 2022.

With the rise of illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, synthetic cathinones, xylazine, and other substances adulterating many traditional street drugs, users often have no idea what they are consuming, leading to overdose and death.  This further complicates toxicology testing and death determination.  This presentation will cover interesting postmortem case studies from Ohio, Denver, and Miami from the scene perspective through autopsy and toxicology testing.

This presentation will review substance use disorder treatment admissions and impacts on Native people residing in Minnesota. Special attention will be paid to geographic areas of the state impacted and specific illegal substances prominent with Native people in Minnesota using both treatment admission and overdose data.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 10, 2022.

This webinar will focus on the journey through medical marijuana and the decriminalization of hemp with legalization on the horizon in the state of Ohio. We will also focus on the impact that legalization has made in the state of Colorado over the past 10 years. The journey between these two states will demonstrate the challenges and needs for a shift in the analytical approach.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on April 5, 2022, as part of the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

The NIJ Forensic Science Research and Development Symposium is an open meeting where attendees can learn about NIJ-funded research across a variety of forensic science areas. This is one of four videos from the 2022 symposium, which was held March 1-2, 2022.

Presentations include - 

This webinar features a discussion of previously published research on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Booker decision - which effectively transformed the United States Sentencing Guidelines from a mandatory, to an advisory, system. The presentation will address selected research findings from the last 15 years. Individual participants will briefly review their previous research findings with particular attention paid to the analytic methods used.

The Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP) is a near real-time suspected overdose event surveillance platform developed by the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (W/B HIDTA). The platform allows participating agencies to develop and implement response strategies that are tailored to their communities to help save lives.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 7, 2021.

The role of a death certificate has evolved from a legal record of death to a document used extensively by public and private entities to monitor the health of our nation. As the public health usage of death certificates continues to grow, it has become increasingly important to complete death certificates in a clear and consistent manner. This webinar will cover best practices for filling out death certificates in drug-related deaths.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on November 30, 2021.

With the increased prevalence of DART-MS in forensic laboratories comes an increased need for tools and resources. This webinar will highlight the new NIST/NIJ DART-MS Data Interpretation Tool (DIT), a freely available software tool that allows users to interpret DART-MS data resulting in improved presumptive screening of seized drug evidence. Other resources to assist with adoption and implementation of the DART-MS DIT will also be discussed.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 21, 2021.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Agencies (ASTHO) will provide an overview of the Project ECHO model and how the model has been adapted to create a supportive learning community of coroners and medical examiners dedicated to improving the investigation and certification of overdose deaths. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 7, 2021. 

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and an international award-winning author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Quinones’ latest book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, will be featured in this FTCoE webinar celebrating National Forensic Science Week.

This webinar will provide an overview of overdose fatality reviews (OFRs) with a specific focus on engaging partnerships with coroners, medical examiners, and medicolegal death investigators.  The presenters will highlight OFRs that have been implemented by engaging the medicolegal death investigation system and will discuss challenges and recommendations associated with implementing an OFR. The webinar will consist of three presentations on OFRs highlighting a county-level, a rural community, and a state-wide approach.

Over the last ten years, numerous novel psychoactive substances (NPS) have emerged in the recreational drug supply. Upon synthesis or discovery, each of these drugs has been given a name other than its IUPAC chemical name, primarily for ease of communication. This has resulted in various naming convention for NPS, sometimes multiple within a given subclass. This webinar is aimed at tackling the naming conventions for NPS and the associated challenges encountered along the way.

The primary focus of this presentation is to develop a better understanding of the fragmentation behavior of emerging synthetic drugs in different types of mass spectrometers. The goal is to assist practitioners in seized drugs and forensic toxicology with their understanding of current casework, and to help them more-readily identify new drugs as they emerge.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on March 5, 2021.

This webinar will discuss the analytical methodology developed and validated to identify and quantify novel synthetic opioids and traditional opioids in oral fluid. The presenter will also discuss targeted and non-targeted approaches using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) methods for detection of fentanyl- and non-fentanyl related novel synthetic opioids. Additionally, this webinar with cover sample preparation techniques for isolating synthetic opioids with various chemistries and structures.

This webinar seeks to describe how preemptive synthesis and characterization of potent psychoactive substances from the literature can aid forensic scientists in the identification of unknowns appearing in samples emerging from illicit markets. Additionally, the presenter seeks to provide understanding of how gaps in pharmacological knowledge of old drugs can be exploited to find new emerging synthetic drugs.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on February 8, 2021.
 

Highly toxic, synthetic drugs introduce significant health hazards to the forensic laboratory.  Understanding current knowledge and best practices will help laboratories manage their liability. This presenter covered topics such as known risks of handling hazardous drugs, creating a practical framework for the assessment, development, and improvement of safety systems, and additional research needed regarding exposure risks.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on June 25, 2020.

NIJ’s American Indian and Alaska Native Travel Scholarship Program Scholars discuss:

• Why they applied to the program.
• Which conference they chose to attend and why.
• Why representation of American Indian and Alaska Native is important in the field of criminal justice.
• What conference sessions they chose to attend and which they found most interesting.
• How they want to contribute to the fields of tribal and criminal justice.

Lieutenant Piotrowski, New Jersey State Police, discusses drug monitoring programs. With this program, his agency collects multiple drug-related data sets to ultimately have an impact on mitigating the impact of drugs in his community. Topics include the benefits of implementing a drug monitoring program, some of the outcomes of the program, and how federal funding can help an agency start such a program.

Lieutenant Piotrowski participated in an NIJ Day panel at the 2019 International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference and Expo.

This webinar discussed the role of emergent technologies for both separation and detection techniques employed in chromatographic systems to increase selectivity for the identification of emerging drugs. Techniques include supercritical fluid chromatography, multi-dimensional liquid chromatography, multi-modal liquid chromatography, nano liquid chromatography, vacuum ultraviolet detection, and cold electron ionization mass spectrometry.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on March 19, 2020.

After the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Farm Bill) was enacted in December 2018, many states rushed to make changes to their own laws to allow the hemp industry to grow and thrive in their jurisdictions. By removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, Cannabis sativa L. plant material with a concentration of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol less than 0.3% on a dry weight basis was no longer considered marijuana.

Given the vital role of medical examiners and coroners (ME/C) in recognizing emerging trends in drug overdose deaths, partnering epidemiologists with ME/C offices can greatly enhance the utility of the significant volume of data generated by medicolegal death investigation. Epidemiologists from three unique ME jurisdictions—North Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia—share their experiences with monitoring drug overdose deaths, trends observed, and how best to utilize ME/C data to inform public health policy.

Attendees will hear from experts in agricultural policy, hemp industry analytical testing, and the DEA Special Testing and Research laboratory to obtain a better understanding of the issues that have developed for forensic drug testing since the signing of the 2018 Farm Bill.  This webinar will provide a history of the Farm Bill as it relates to the legalities of hemp and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).  Information on farming and quality testing used by the hemp industry will be presented.