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“Do No Harm Or Injustice To Them”: Indicting And Convicting Physicians For Controlled Substance Distribution In The Age Of The Opioid Crisis, Julia B. Macdonald

Maine Law Review

In response to the devastating impact of the opioid crisis, the Department of Justice has in recent years launched an aggressive crackdown on what it characterizes as “fraudulent prescribers” of controlled substances. Against this backdrop, physicians, prosecutors, and defense attorneys face a number of issues. First, there is a lingering circuit court split on the issue of whether indictments against physicians and other medical professionals for illegal controlled substance distribution must allege that the physician acted “outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.” I argue that acting without a legitimate medical purpose is an …