Joel Smithers, Virginia doctor who illegally prescribed 500k opioid pills, to be sentenced

A Virginia doctor who prescribed over 500,000 opioid tablets in the space of two years will be sentenced Wednesday.

Joel Smithers faces 20 years to life in prison and a possible fine of over $200 million dollars after he was convicted in May of 859 counts of illegal drug prescribing, according to the Department of Justice.

Smithers was convicted of prescribing over half a million opioid tablets in a period of 19 months from his Martinsville office.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number of pills prescribed per 2016 resident of the town was 399.9 a person, one of the highest ratios in the country.

Smithers made $700,000 from people driving hundreds of miles to buy opioids until March of 2017 when his office was raided by federal agents.

A jury found that Smithers prescriptions of oxycodone and oxymorphone lead to the death of West Virginia women.

“This defendant not only violated his Hippocratic Oath to his patients, but he perpetuated, on a massive scale, the vicious cycle of addiction, despair, and destruction,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said at Smithers’ conviction.

He also was convicted of one count of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances and one count of maintaining a place for the purpose of illegally distributing controlled substances.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that 1.7 million Americans suffer from substance abuse on prescribed opioids for pain relief and that 130 of them die every day of an overdose.