Idaho State Police Forensic Services - Comments
AnonymousSupportGovernment
Summary: A representative from the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) supports the initiative to improve toxicology data submission by identifying state-level statutory barriers and suggesting ways to streamline sample collection. They also propose creating a shared database of validated testing methods to help other laboratories meet the federal recommendations for tier II drugs.
One of the barriers we have is our state statute, it is actually pretty good if it was followed, but it very rarely is and it is a bit cumbersome. If the state statue was changed it would make it easier on the lab and the coroners. Right now, to follow statute they would have to collect two separate samples, one for the statistical sample and one for their investigation. The statistical sample is required to come to ISP-FS. If they made it so the coroners were responsible for reporting the results, it would make it so only one sample had to be collected and they could report the results from wherever they sent their sample.
Even though it is not how the statute is written, I think Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) is getting some results from coroners for reporting. We are not getting many auto accident victim (AV) kits in. I would estimate we received between 5 and 10 last year. I know there were way more fatalities than that. I don’t want to push for the AV kits to come in, as it would end up doubling the work we had to do on fatalities. Instead, I would like to push for a different way of reporting or sending the statistical info to ITD.
we meet the recommendations for all of the tier I drugs but do not meet all of the recommendations for the tier II drugs. We currently do not test for the following tier II compounds: synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones (limited), barbiturates, gabapentin, pregabalin, secobarbital, or valproic acid. The reason that we do not follow the recommendations for these compounds are either because we have not yet developed a suitable method (gabapentin and pregabalin have proven to be particularly difficult), or that they are compounds we do not see routinely in our controlled substances section and we are therefore not anticipating being present in the toxicology samples (synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, barbiturates, secobarbital, valproic acid). My suggestion for overcoming these challenges would be to have those labs that are meeting recommendations have their methods available/published so that other labs can select a method that may be suitable for them, or better yet, have a database where all of the methods that do meet the requirements can be compiled, stored and accessed by everyone.