E-mails: Mass. slow to react to drug lab scandal

BOSTON  (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - New documents reportedly show that state health officials failed to launch a full scale investigation into the state drug lab and chemist Annie Dookhan until Governor Deval Patrick ordered it shut down in August.
    
According to the Boston Herald, that was a full seven months after officials learned Dookhan had mishandled at least 90 drug samples.
    
In e-mails obtained by the paper, the former Department of Public Health commissioner John Auerbach and his boss, Secretary of Health Judyann Bigby, were scrambling for just basic information on the lab and Dookhan after Patrick ordered the lab's closure.
    
Dookhan has admitted to falsifying and mishandling drug evidence, potentially jeopardizing up to 34,000 drug cases. She pleaded not guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of falsifying her academic records.

Cox Media Group