According to the Associated Press, law enforcement in the small East Colorado town has instructed local residents to not drink their tap water after well samples found trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive chemical compound in marijuana. Lincoln County Public Health says they will continue handing out water at the Hugo Town Hall for drinking and cooking.
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The Colorado town of Hugo’s water supply is loaded with THC, CNN reports.
“Investigators are assessing the situation with state and federal authorities”, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
Commercial marijuana cultivation, product manufacturing, testing facilities and pot stores are banned in Hugo, about 100 miles southeast of Denver. As of now, officials say no one has gone to the Emergency Room showing signs or symptoms of THC.
Residents were told not even to let their pets drink the water.
Some, however, are raising doubts about the contamination, because THC and water don’t mix – a bit like oil and water.
‘The contaminated well has been identified and shut down and the lines are being flushed, ‘ the alert said.
If residents do notice anything amiss, they are asked to call the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center at 1-800-222-1222.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job for my community if we just wrote this off”, Capt. Michael Yowell of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said, according to the Post.
Evans’ assessment was certainly backed up by science: a 1998 study examining methods to enhance the unquestionably poor water solubility of substance held that “present results suggest that the use of cyclodextrins might be a simple and useful method to overcome the poor water solubility of THC”.
Water bottles will be given out to the people of Hugo. We don’t dispute the science that THC isn’t water-soluble.
Lincoln County officials first discovered the issue when an employee used tap water to demonstrate a clean drug test. But, the tap water tested positive for THC.
This Denver Post article may be the best so far on the subject as it shows both the hysteria…
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“… when you have a presumptive positive of THC in our water supply, we take that very seriously”, he said.
