UMASS Medical School Drugs of Abuse Laboratory Timeliness Improvement Project

The UMASS Medical School Drug of Abuse Lab (DAL) is committed to its mission of providing the highest quality forensic services and scientific technical support to the criminal justice community in the Worcester County, Massachusetts. The DAL is accredited by ANAB in the following three scopes within the Seized Drugs discipline: Qualitative Determination, Quantitative Measurement and Weight Measurement. The DAL’s backlog has grown and continues to increase due to increases in submissions and complexity of submissions for analysis (opioid crisis related), aging laboratory equipment, and decrease of Analysts hours due to budgetary shortcomings. Funds from this award will be utilized to reduce the DAL’s backlog thereby providing timely analysis of all controlled substances submissions. This will be accomplished by providing the DAL with the funds to purchase necessary equipment (a GC/MS) and increase staffing levels. The outcome will be a forensic laboratory with the resources to provide timely qualitative and quantitative analyses on all submissions as to better assist the DAL’s shareholders in the Massachusetts and Federal Criminal Justice systems in their battle against the drug and opioid crisis. CA/NCF