“What we’ve seen lately is there certainly has been a rise in the prosecution of prescription drug abuse. Oftentimes the calendars in the drug court have an equal number of people who are legally or lawfully initially prescribed drugs as they do illegal or illicit drugs. I think it’s because of the unfortunate ease of getting prescription medication. That is a defense to cases where it’s not always whether or not you did it; it’s oftentimes why it happened. We’ve successfully represented people who were given too many drugs by licensed physicians that then got themselves into trouble based upon the prescriptions they should have never been given.
What we’ve noticed certainly here on Nassau County is some unfortunate tragedies involving cases of prescription drugs being over-prescribed, cases that are commonly referred to as ‘pill mills,’ doctors that are selling and abusing their prescriptions in terms of pills that they are actually putting out on the street illegally.
Certainly it can be a defense to a case, if not an outright defense. It’s certainly a mitigation as to someone who might have pills in excess of what they should have when they’ve been supplied with those pills by a licensed medical doctor. Any doctor is a licensed practitioner and being accused of running a pill mill or writing too many prescriptions can be the end of their practice and certainly can lead to criminal convictions. We’ve seen a great increase in these types of cases being investigated and brought here in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.”