Mass. state chemist was high at work almost every day: Report

A new report from the Boston attorney general’s office alleges that a former Massachusetts state chemist was high on drugs while working, jeopardizing thousands of criminal cases in which she was involved.

Sonja Farak pleaded guilty in 2014 to charges including tampering with evidence and stealing, but the newly released report indicated that she may have been getting high at work nearly every day for eight years, WCVB reported.

“The information we gathered during the course of our investigation is disturbing and will no doubt have implications for many cases,” a spokewoman for Attorney General Maura Healey told the Boston Herald.

Investigators concluded that Farak testified in court while high on methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs from 2005 to 2013, The Associated Press reported.

In the former chemist’s own grand jury testimony, she claimed to have once smoked crack before a 2012 police inspection of the Amherst lab where she worked, which has since been closed, the AP added.

At least 10,000 drug samples were handled by Farak while she was employed at the lab, WCVB stated, adding that it was not yet certain how many cases could have been affected by her drug use.

“Now that our investigation is substantially complete, the district attorneys, defense attorneys and the court will need to determine how best to proceed on each of these individual cases,” the attorney general spokeswoman said in the Herald’s report.