title: Incidence of cannabinoids in medical examiner urine specimens.
abstract: Cannabinoid use was studied in a nonspecific population of postmortem urine specimens in the State of Maryland. Of 500 sequential specimens screened for cannabinoids by enzyme multiplied immunoassay EMIT, 63 (13%) were initially positive and 58 (12%) were confirmed positive (92%). It was observed that geographic location and race did not correlate with cannabinoid prevalence. Cannabinoid use was observed to be strongly age related, with peak use by the 21- to 25-year-old age group where 22% of the cases were positive. Use of cannabinoids was also closely linked to homicides, which represented nearly half of the positive cases but only 13% of the total cases. When comparing manner of death, the greatest percent of confirmed positives was seen in homicide (26%) and drug-related (17%) deaths. The incidence of cannabinoid use was found to be more than 3 times as great in drug-related (17%) as compared to natural deaths (5%). The percent of cannabinoid-positive cases from vehicle-related accidents was low (6%) and that from nonvehicle-related accidents somewhat higher (10%). Other drugs appeared in cannabinoid-positive cases. Most prevalent was ethanol N = 18, followed by morphine (from heroin, N = 11), quinine N = 11, and cocaine N = 11. Phencyclidine (PCP) occurred twice and several other drugs were reported only once. Of the 25 homicide cases screened for drugs, 64% were positive for some drug including ethyl alcohol. Thus it appears that a high percentage of homicide cases are drug related. Males greatly outnumbered females (56:2) in positive cases, but the number of female specimens received was small.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Maryland, Baltimore.
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Isenschmid
authors.forename: Y H
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Caplan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002186:Cannabinoids / Q000652:urine*; D002423:Cause of Death; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D002855:Chromatography, Thin Layer; D003334:Coroners and Medical Examiners; D005260:Female; D005554:Forensic Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007124:Immunoenzyme Techniques; D008297:Male; D008385:Marijuana Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology
chemical_list: D002186:Cannabinoids