Pubdate: Wed, 12 Dec 2001
Source: Bluefield Daily Telegraph (WV)
Copyright: 2001 Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Contact:  http://www.bdtonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1483
Author: Mett Ausley Jr MD
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n2030/a03.html

DR. SUTHERLAND IS THE REAL VICTIM

Your comments on the sentencing of Dr. Franklin Sutherland ("Downward 
departure in sentencing was wrong," Dec. 3), miss the point. Why should the 
enforcement resources of the federal government, more appropriately 
directed toward sophisticated crooks and organized crime, be expended on an 
otherwise innocuous rural doctor whose crime was to allow himself to be 
manipulated by drug-seeking patients into a pattern of prescribing 
narcotics? Such occurrences are common, and can be adequately addressed by 
state medical boards. To insist on a prison sentence nearly twice Al 
Capone's is disproportionate to the point of barbarism.

Dr. Sutherland is the victim, rather than the beneficiary of the 
discrimination that has occurred here. Stung by rising public outcry that 
the futile war on drugs has unfairly impacted the poor and nonwhite, drug 
enforcement bureaucrats prize the scalps of affluent professionals who 
serve to dress up the statistics a bit. What can't be accomplished in 
numbers can be made up in courtroom drama and sensational publicity.

The prosecution's nonsensical comparison of Dr. Sutherland's undisciplined 
prescribing to crack cocaine trafficking evokes the irony that the 
defendant might have fared better had he been caught at the latter offense, 
in which case he may have extricated himself by snitching on another 
conspirator. This doesn't work when the "big fish" is a legitimate 
pharmaceutical firm, now consulted by a former U.S. attorney who until most 
recently was locally engaged in prosecuting the company's addicted consumers.

The failure of organized medicine to speak out against this and other 
modern-day show trials confirms your concerns about the debased condition 
of the professionals. Our denunciations are rightfully directed at this crowd.

Mett Ausley Jr., MD

Lake Waccamaw, N.C. 
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MAP posted-by: Beth