The Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory in Springfield now includes a new drug testing facility that officials say should reduce a backlog in drug evidence cases.

Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan says delays in testing drugs have led to the dismissal of charges against some defendants. He says the new drug lab should speed up the process.

“It brings a nationally certified lab into western Mass, so that everybody knows that when these drugs are tested that they are in fact what they are purported to be.”

And that’s crucial, Sullivan says, after the scandal at a state lab in Boston, where a former chemist admitted to faking tests in drug cases involving some 40,000 people. And he says the closure of a drug lab at UMass-Amherst in 2011 contributed to the backlog when evidence seized in western Massachusetts had to be sent out of the region for testing.

“It will modernize the testing. And it will make sure that defendants don’t wait long periods of time to have their drug tested so they can resolve their case or go to trial.”

Sullivan says it will also mean that state lab chemists who are subpoenaed to testify in drug cases won’t have to travel as far to do so.