For me, it's hard to give an opinion on this without knowing the exact details of the 30 pills a day thing, if he even really did that. Why they would be 10 mg OxyContin to achieve 300 mg is beyond me, when he could simply prescribe 3-4 80 mg Oxy's to do the same thing. Maybe he was giving people multiple months' supply (yet for some reason didn't just give post-dated scripts instead, as long as it was going to be illegal anyway), or maybe he was maintaining addicts, who knows. If he did write the prescriptions for a month at a time, what is more puzzling is what pharmacist would fill a prescription for 900 OxyContin. Why wouldn't you just switch a patient to something stronger? 30 OxyContin a day really needs an explanation before forming an opinion.

As for the pregnant woman, it's the withdrawal that will kill the baby, not the opiates (although it's certainly possible), as methadone-dependent women give birth every day.

I personally think the guy should have the ability to do what he wants, as far as prescribing power. If he wants to give more than a month's supply of a painkiller to a patient, he should be able to, and it should be legal to maintain opiate addicts how the physician sees fit. I hope the guy can get set free, but I doubt it.

-yawkaw