That's odd. No cop or investigator tastes evidence. All that stuff on Miami Vice where Tubbs takes a taste of the evidence is a joke. What if it had LCD or PCP? A small amount is highly potent.
Anyway, field testing marijauna, coke or heroin takes less than a minute. A little amount scooped into a test kit, break the chemical glass vials, shake up the test kit, look for color change. That's it. If it was a different substance, it would take days, but only because you have to send it to a lab.
Yeah, I field tested headache powder when I was a cop. I never heard of headache powder before and it was on a suspect.
I put it into my cocaine field test kit. I was like,
, headache powder my ass. Came up negative. I put it into my heroin test kit. Now, my expectation was lower as heroin is not white like coke. Came up negative. That bothered me because heroin test kits were rare to get a hold of when in a patrol division. Narcs have plenty on hand though.