treacherous, treacherous drug supply. >> reporter: and with that, technology has had to keep up as well. it's why louise and her team are now working with dasgupta from the university of north carolina to use infrared pectroscopy to help destinguish specific components in the drug. >> it's rare to find a sample of heroin that's just heroin. we may call it heroin, we may refer to it as heroin, but it usually isn't. sometimes fentanyl analogues manitol, other cutting agents and sometimes very dangerous chemicals. >> what we've seen more recently, especially during covid is big supply chain disruptions of the established cartels. and so you have a lot more experimentation. a lot more -- a lot of new chemical synthesis puttings being used to manufacture the