A ******ia doctor who prescribed more than 500,000 doses of opioids in two years was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Wednesday for leading what prosecutors called an interstate drug distribution ring.
The overprescription of painkillers is one of the roots of the nation’s opioid crisis, and patients of Dr. Joel Smithers traveled hundreds of miles from neighboring states to pick up oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl, according to law enforcement officials. They said he prescribed controlled substances to every patient in the Martinsville, Va., practice he opened in August 2015.
Dr. Smithers, 36, was convicted of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing opioids, and jurors found that the drugs he prescribed caused the death of a woman from West ******ia. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Dr. Smithers flooded a region with opioid prescriptions and “hid behind his white doctor’s coat as a large-scale drug dealer,” Jesse Fong, special agent in charge of the Washington division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The overprescription of painkillers is one of the roots of the nation’s opioid crisis, and patients of Dr. Joel Smithers traveled hundreds of miles from neighboring states to pick up oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl, according to law enforcement officials. They said he prescribed controlled substances to every patient in the Martinsville, Va., practice he opened in August 2015.
Dr. Smithers, 36, was convicted of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing opioids, and jurors found that the drugs he prescribed caused the death of a woman from West ******ia. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Dr. Smithers flooded a region with opioid prescriptions and “hid behind his white doctor’s coat as a large-scale drug dealer,” Jesse Fong, special agent in charge of the Washington division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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