Ex-Chemist In Massachusetts Was High On Drugs At Work For 8 Years

[Judi Lynn]

Source: NPR

Ex-Chemist In Massachusetts Was High On Drugs At Work For 8 Years

May 4, 2016·5:40 PM ET

Nearly every day for eight years, a former chemist in Massachusetts was high on drugs — drugs stolen from the lab where she worked. An investigation by the state attorney general found that from 2005 to 2013, Sonja Farak, 37, heavily abused various drugs including cocaine, LSD and methamphetamines, and even manufactured her own crack cocaine using lab supplies. 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.

During her career as a chemist, Farak worked for two years at the Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain, Mass., and then for nine years at the state drug lab in Amherst, Mass. According to the attorney general's report, "her responsibilities involved testing, for authenticity, various controlled substances submitted by law enforcement agencies" and testifying "in court as to her test results, which served as evidence in criminal cases."

About a year after moving to the Amherst lab, Farak started consuming the lab's reference "standard" drugs (the term given to substances bought from drug companies to serve as control in testing).

. . .

"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."

Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/04/476755684/ex-chemist-in-massachusetts-was-high-on-drugs-at-work-for-8-years

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[LiberalArkie]

1. She should have been the ideal person to grade the drugs in my opinion.

[Gomez163]

2. Dooood.

[houston16revival]

3. Typical

Lack of boundaries, rules, self-discipline

[Festivito]

7. For the sake of self-discipline, rules and bounderies. Typical.

[tom_kelly]

8. She has a disease n/t

[Helen Borg]

11. Perhaps she is very creative?

[houston16revival]

18. Yeah

She's an artiste all right

[ReRe]

4. Hmmm...

... looks like the drugs took their toll. Hope she didn't harm no one else while imbibing for all those years. I doubt the withdrawal part of her experiment is going to go down quite so easy.

[freebrew]

12. No withdrawal symptoms from the drugs listed...

none of them are really addictive, physically.

Emotionally, there may be some problems, but she'll be in prison where she'll have no choice.

More crap from our war on people.

[Chakab]

20. Uhhh....cocaine and methamphetamine were on the list that she was abusing. Both are physiologically

addictive.

[freebrew]

21. Uhh... no, they're not.

Psychologically, yes. Physiologically, no.

Heroin, yes. Barbiturates, yes.

speed, cocaine, no.

Look it up in something other than gov't supplied propaganda.

[Chakab]

22. I don't need to look anything up. I have personal experience with the physical symptoms

of withdrawal from cocaine after a period of sustained usage.

[freebrew]

23. Psychological symptoms...

make themselves felt at times as physiological. It doesn't mean they are.

'Some' people can become 'addicted' to anything. Doesn't mean it's real addiction.

So, I took speed 'several' times - not addicted, so what?
Personal experience doesn't always translate to fact.

You need to quit pushing the drug war lies.

[Mosby]

24. the addiction cycle is different

Opiates take weeks or months of use to build resistance and then physical cravings. With coke you start building resistance right away, that's why the user needs larger and larger lines to get the same high, on the street it's called "chasing the buzz". Then when the user stops for the night they get the DTs, for some people it can be overwhelming, which is what drives the addiction.

It's worse for rock cocaine because the first couple hits get you so high.

[freebrew]

25. That sounds about right...

just object to the term addiction.

Resistance that causes one to use more for the same high isn't addiction.
Opiates work to stop pain regardless of resistance to getting high.

Kind of like smoking your first cigarette. Remember the 'high' you got?

With the new focus on opiates as the new evil drug, we need to be very careful how we address the situation.

We really don't need another reason for the gestapo to invade our homes and arrest us.
That's why I object to improper labeling of these terms.
It gives more ammo to the drug war, IMO.

[virgogal]

5. I just finished "Nurse Jacky" last night----and now this.

Addiction is a terrible disease .

[NickB79]

6. I've got a degree in biochem. Where do I send my resume?

[jomin41]

9. http://www.maps.org

[Helen Borg]

10. Not a criminal!

Come on...

"Though Farak's drug abuse was rampant, she continued to perform satisfactory work in the lab where she worked, and her addiction went unnoticed, according to testimony from her colleagues."

[freebrew]

13. Exactly...what was the crime here?....nt

[Helen Borg]

14. Perhaps she stole the chemicals, not sure...

But as usual, everything is about the shame of her using drugs. She was performing OK on her job, probably better than any alcohol abuse folks...

[freebrew]

19. Yeah, kinda my point...

but the chemicals were probably to be thrown out after each case.

Another victim-less crime for the prison-for-profit industry.

The shaming must make it acceptable to the general populace?

[malthaussen]

15. So long as her work was competent, why should we care?

If her personal habits do not threaten others, she should be allowed to go to hell in her own way. Of course, one does recognize that there is a difference between "ought" and "is."

-- Mal

[jmowreader]

26. You didn't read the state police report on this case

She was using drugs the cops confiscated before the people caught with them went to trial, which is evidence tampering. Some of it was pretty entertaining: they would bring evidence to the lab and she'd put it in heat-seal bags...but she'd turn down the temp on sealing machine so she could get the bags open without damaging them. Sometimes she'd take just a little of the evidence, knowing if someone reweighed the evidence the theft would be clear. Sometimes she took all of it and replaced it with "substitute" drugs - baking soda?

She also admitted to testifying against people for drug dealing while she was high on the drugs they were accused of dealing. (There's a case I recall from the report: her testimony was scheduled for the afternoon. She drove to the courthouse before noon, ate lunch and got "really high" in her car in the courthouse parking lot, then went inside and put the defendant behind bars.) Anyone whose case came in contact with her will probably go free, and some of them are people who really need to be in jail.

The report also says her work started to go downhill the more she got into drugs. When they finally moved against her, they found confiscated drugs - including the evidence bags they came to the lab in - and drug paraphernalia in her car.

She was also using the "reference samples" for their Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS) machines. These are computerized analyzers that maintain a library of tests - they're files that tell the machine, "if you get a sample that has these chemicals in these ratios, this is what you are looking at." If your lab is licensed to test for meth, you must own a bottle of pure meth which you buy from a legitimate drug manufacturer - and it's expensive because it's of the highest purity and is delivered by armed couriers. (Would YOU want to trust half a pound of reference-grade meth to a regular delivery company? Neither would they.) On a regular schedule you have to verify your machine's meth file by setting the unit to "calibrate" and running a test on reference meth. She used so much of the reference samples the head chemist there had to resort to making "secondary references" out of drugs left over after their former owners' trials were finished.

She fucked up a lot of drug cases and cost the taxpayers a ton of money supporting her drug habit. We should care.

[malthaussen]

28. Good stuff.

Given that it did, in fact, affect her work, the rhetorical does not apply.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

16. And that is the face of the drug war right there. Corrupt to the core. nt

[Sunlei]

17. The withdraw suffering should be enough punishment. I hope she gets some help, meth is an easy

street drug to find.

[jmowreader]

27. She's going to have to get it in solitary confinement

This is NOT the kind of activity that wins you friends in general population.