The report by Attorney General Maura Healey alleges that Amherst chemist Sonja Farak got high off of drugs she took from the lab almost every day for eight years.
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“It is now clear that the Department of Public Health, which oversaw the Amherst drug lab, could have – and should have – done much more in terms of supervision and quality control”, Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan said in a statement.
She allegedly smoked crack before state police interviewed her as part of an inspection of the lab for accreditation. All the while, her addiction went unnoticed until the end, when her appearance began to deteriorate, lab workers discovered missing samples, and she was “nosy” about which new drugs were being brought to the lab, according to the report. He said because most drug cases are resolved through a guilty plea, there was only a “very, very small” chance she testified in Suffolk drug cases.
“Farak testified that her primary reason for first using the drug was “curiosity.’ She indicated that she had researched the drug in the past and “when she read about it, ‘ she concluded, ‘that’s the one I am going to try if I am going to try it.’ Farak enjoyed what she called the ‘positive side effects” of the drug: it lasted a longtime and was an ‘energy boost.’ According to Farak, the ‘high” from the drug lasted approximately 8 to 10 hours”. Hence, a former supervisor testified, he made up samples for comparison purposes himself. Chemists routinely identified prescription drugs only by visual examination, according to the attorney general’s report. “Anything that went through that lab while she was there is in question”, he told the Boston Globe.
“We’ll certainly be addressing it as group, in addition to our own efforts to look at the situation”, said O’Keefe, who said his office didn’t use the Amherst lab often but is still reviewing its files.
“The information we gathered during the course of our investigation is disturbing and will no doubt have implications for many cases”, said Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a Healey spokeswoman, adding it will be up to the DA offices, defense attorneys and courts on “how best to proceed on each of these individual cases”.
Those speaking for defendants called for widespread review. “These scandals, and the years it has taken to uncover them, demand a remedy for the thousands of criminal defendants who were convicted based on false and tainted evidence”.
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The 37-year-old former chemist has already served an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty in 2014 to evidence tampering, theft, and possession charges relating to a handful of criminal cases. Though Farak was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to jail in 2014, the findings from the state’s investigation into the scope of her misconduct were just released Tuesday.
