Quick Chill Week at the “Depahtment” of Public Health

Not a lot of new things happening because it’s the fourth of July week! Half of the office took off Monday and Tuesday and the other half took off Thursday and Friday since the holiday was smack dab in the middle of the week so the office has bee really low key.

Lots of mail sorting along with the usual legal meeting thrown into the mix and a new added twist of looking for DPH regulations (some of which did not actually exist to my despair) and drafting correspondence to answer people’s questions. I’m becoming more familiar with what you can and cant do in terms of drugs and its interesting because there was a totally bogus article online that went against what every regulation is in the DPH but someone published a few times over and the fake law has brought a lot of clarification questions from the public. The article was about how Epi Pens are now required to be kept in a big accessible unlocked stash in schools as of recently. Which is very false because even though epinephrine is not a controlled substance in most states, in MA it is a schedule VI drug and you still need a prescription in order to have Epi Pens and use them. (Wow I just reread that and I really sound like I know what I’m talking about (this is not true I just pick up bits and pieces but I’m excited to be learning more along the way through little random assigned tasks)). But anyways yes I am learning a lot about drugs here haha.

On another note I went to a follow up meeting with Undersecretary Queally about the Driving Sober Campaign and that is coming along swimmingly. They presented three ideas ready to go into production and I got to help pick which would be the best. The process was much more political than I thought and there was a lot of concern for what they Governor’s message would be conveying in each of these, especially with the election coming up. We wanted as little potential criticism as possible while at the same time being able to lead the conversation on Cannabis use in MA.

My days are getting fuller and fuller and hopefully next week I’ll have the resources to make my research project a GO and get to work on that.