Supreme Court justices on Tuesday seemed divided over where to draw the line for what threshold physicians have to cross for their prescribing patterns to be considered drug dealing — and whether doctors have to know they are misprescribing medication for it to be criminal.
The issue in the case, which concerns two doctors who were sentenced to decades in prison for unlawfully dispensing opioids, centers on whether prosecutors should have to prove that not only did prescribers violate standard medical practices to win convictions, but that they did so knowingly.