Supreme Court Hear Case About Doctors Convicted of Running Opioid “Pill Mills”

The U.S. Supreme court heard arguments Tuesday in an appeal by doctors who have been convicted of running opioid “pill mills,” Reuters reports.

Lower court rulings upheld the convictions of the two doctors, Xiulu Ruan and Shakeel Kahn. Prosecutors say the doctors misused their medical licenses to engage in drug trafficking. They said Ruan issued almost 300,000 controlled substance prescriptions from 2011 to 2015 through a mobile clinic in Mobile, Alabama and accepted kickbacks from a drug company to prescribe fentanyl spray.

Prosecutors said Kahn sold prescriptions for cash and illegally prescribed large amounts of opioids, resulting in at least one overdose death.

Lawyers for the two doctors said the jurors who convicted them did not weigh whether the doctors had a “good faith” reason to believe their prescriptions were medically valid.