A doctor who prosecutors said ran a medical practice in Virginia like an interstate drug distribution ring was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison for illegally prescribing opioids.
Dr. Joel Smithers was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Abingdon.
Judge James Jones sentenced Smithers to 40 years. He faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years and a maximum of life.
Smithers was convicted in May of more than 800 counts of illegally distributing opioids, including oxycodone and oxymorphone that caused the death of a West Virginia woman.
Authorities say Smithers prescribed more than 500,000 doses of opioids to patients from Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee while based in Martinsville, Virginia, from 2015 to 2017.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said the sentence, while severe, “serves as just punishment” for Smithers’ actions.
“This physician perpetuated, on a massive scale, the vicious cycle of addiction and despair,” Cullen said in a statement.
Smithers, 36, a married father of five from Greensboro, North Carolina, testified that he was a caring doctor who was deceived by some of his patients.
Some patients remained fiercely loyal to him, testifying that they needed the powerful opioids he prescribed for them to cope with chronic pain.
WSET-TV reported that the judge recommended that Smithers serve his sentence in a prison close to his family and that he receive mental health treatment.
Smithers wrote in a court filing that he plans to appeal his convictions. His attorney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the sentence.
snafucit on October 2nd, 2019 at 22:43 UTC »
I'm curious to see how the amount of Opiates this guy prescribed compares to other physicians. I feel like just throwing a big number, without any other reference to the time periods it covers, or how it compares to other physicians in his specialty, seems a bit lazy on ABC's part.
En-TitY_ on October 2nd, 2019 at 22:35 UTC »
Seriously though, isn't this just one of a few "fall guys"? Isn't there a larger entity that should be held accountable?
elmturner on October 2nd, 2019 at 21:17 UTC »
I don't get it. I've had 4 teeth pulled at one time. I've given birth. Never have I ever gotten a prescription for an opiate pain medication. Any time I've been in horrible pain, they say ''tylenol and ibuprofen''. Who the hell are these doctors who just hand out pain pills to anybody? I can't even get one prescription pill when I'm in desperate, awful pain.