When are doctors and patients going to understand that the government is going to continue to attack doctors for prescribing opioids because they can, and there are no repercussions? As already shown in multiple cases, even after the Ruan/Kahn decision, doctors are still pleading guilty to these charges, probably because that is what their lawyer recommends, because even the lawyers don’t know what I teach—that no drug causes addiction. They still talk like doctors are drug pushers and prescribing opioids could be interpreted by the jury as being illegal. Even the lawyers with pages on Doctorsofcourage.org have never listened to my videos or attended my webinars.
Here is another case of a doctor being attacked. And this was done by a government organization formed after the Ruan/Kahn decision was released. So nothing is going to stop the DEA/DOJ except the repeal of the CSA.
Merideth C. Norris, DO, 52, of Kennebunk, ME was arrested on Wednesday, Oct 26, 2022 by the DOJ and charged with illegally distributing opioids and other controlled substances.
This was the first arrest and charges brought by the New England Prescription Opioid Strike Force, just launched this summer (after the 9-0 Ruan/Kahn decision was released) to supposedly combat “unlawful prescribing amid the ongoing opioid epidemic”. But as the Supreme Court stated in their decision, as long as the doctor is licensed to prescribe controlled substances, the prescriptions are only illegal if sold as conventionally understood as street drugs, and not to a patient for a legitimate condition.
Now the government did not go into the usual detail that they usually do in a press release to explain what they consider illegal prescribing in Dr. Norris’s case. So basically, they are going to fabricate a case against her, probably by forced perjury of employees telling lies on the witness stand, like is currently being done in the trial of Dr. Howard Adelglass in New York. The government forces doctor’s employees to lie or be charged themselves with a crime. This, in our Justice System, is supposed to be illegal, but since there are no repercussions due to actual immunity for government agents, they do whatever they want to do to win the case. We must end this and put these lawbreakers in prison cells. The real lawbreakers in this case are Assistant AG Kenneth A. Polite, Jr.; U.S. Attorney Darcie N. McElwee; HHS Deputy IG Christian J. Schrank; DEA Administrator Anne Milgram; and FBI Agent Joseph R. Bonavolonta; Principal Assistant Deputy Chief Kilby Macfadden and Trial Attorneys Patrick Queenan and Thomas Campbell.
Back to Dr. Merideth Norris.
The government is using the standard statement against her, of prescribing opioids, and other controlled substances, “outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose”. At her court appearance yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen ordered Dr. Norris be released on the condition that she not prescribe any Schedule II-V controlled substances. So that means all of her pain patients and substance abuse patients that need refills as of today, are thrown to the street to treat themselves. Great job, judge!
Dr. Norris is charged with 10 counts of illegal distribution of opioids and other controlled substances. Court records show that Norris prescribed oxycodone, methadone, diazepam and clonazepam to three patients between Dec. 23, 2021, and June 21, 2022. Well…she’s a doctor who treats pain! Her attorney is Federal Public Defender, David Beneman. So my guess is he will talk her into a plea agreement. Public Pretenders get bonuses if their clients don’t go to trial. Imagine that. I consider that a vested interest in making more of us criminals than following the principles of justice this country was based on. If it saves the government money, force the client to take a plea.
Judge Torreson set a trial date of Dec. 5, 2022. Dr. Norris, do NOT waive your right to a speedy trial. They would need the time to construct a case against you. Your defense is rock solid. Don’t give them the time to force perjury on your employees and patients. Get your employees and patients to be YOUR witnesses in writing. That way, if the government interviews them, it has to include your attorney (although he is working for the government too.)
Now check out this data presented by the media:
Opioid prescriptions drop in Maine, but overdose deaths continue to rise
Last year in Maine, a record 632 people died from overdoses. This year, according to the Maine Drug Data Hub, the state is on pace to set a new record with a projected 694 deadly overdoses by year’s end.
A state law implemented in 2016, An Act to Prevent Opiate Abuse by Strengthening the Controlled Substances Prescription Monitoring Program, limits the amount of opioids a provider can prescribe for a patient. It also places additional guardrails intended to safeguard against drug abuse.
So what good has this done? It has caused the overdose rate to go up because it doesn’t address the cause of addiction.
Who is Merideth Norris, DO, FACOFP
Dr. Norris is an osteopathic family practice physician specializing in pain, addiction, and obesity, with 20 years of experience, most of that time in Maine. She has worked in emergency departments all over Maine, as well as detox facilities, inpatient treatment environments, methadone clinics, and outpatient recovery centers. She went to medical school at Nova Southeastern University and then did her Rural Family Medicine Residency at West Virginia University. She is certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine, the American Board of Addiction Medicine, and the American Board of Osteopathic Family Physicians.
She is owner and sole practitioner of Graceful Recovery clinic and medical director at of Enso Recovery Center in Lewiston and Portland.
She is frequently seen in the press advocating for available resources for people with substance use disorder and drafts large amounts of testimony to the state legislation on opioid policy and treatment access. She has been interviewed as an addiction expert on both local public radio and the national Reelz network.
She presents CME on www.thecmecenter.org on treatment for pain and substance abuse HERE. Her CME courses include:
Busting the Myths Around Opioids & Chronic Pain Management
PCPs need to know what modalities are available to treat chronic pain including procedures, non-opioid, and opioid therapy, and others.
Learning Objectives: After the lecture:
• The learner will understand the appropriate goals of chronic pain management.
• The learner will understand the evidence supporting appropriate opiate prescribing for chronic pain.
• The learner will be able to differentiate and understand the interconnected relationship of chronic pain and OUD
• The learner will understand the unexpected consequences of the CDC guidelines on patients with substance use disorders and on patients with chronic pain.
To the RX Pad...and Beyond! Options in Pain Management
This lecture will explore the non-opiate options for treating chronic pain. This will include how to discuss with patients the various pain management options available to them.
Learning Objectives: After the lecture, the learner will:
- Understand the most common non-opiate options for treating chronic pain
- Understand the indications for the interventional procedures
- Understand the indications for referral to a specialist
- Understand how to discuss these options with patients
- Understand the evidence-based behavioral interventions
Cannabis & OUD: When is it a problem and when is it a solution?
Learning Objectives:
• The learner will explore the difference between use as a medication and misuse as in a disorder
• The learner will review some common misconceptions and conversations about the use of opioids and cannabis, together and separately
• The learner will learn about the perspective of a patient in long term recovery for whom cannabis is a safer intervention than some of the options
• The learner will explor different clinical scenarios of use and misuse
Her personal blog Website is https://www.secondhandparachute.com/
Her Graceful recovery clinic has a Facebook page.
Patient Reviews
And finally, here is a patient’s report of Dr. Norris’s care:
Excellent! I cannot express enough how much Dr. Norris has helped my health and my life. She always listens. Always has patient’s health as #1 priority, even if the advice may not be what the patient wants to hear. The staff is always kind and courteous, they are awesome! The office is warm and friendly. If I had to recommend a Dr. for anyone who wants to seriously make a commitment to improving their health, the list starts and ends with Dr. Norris
Another patient suddenly cut off from treatment just messaged me with the following:
I am writing to you today with a very heavy heart and urgent matter. My wonderful, kind, compassionate doctor has just been charged with inappropriately prescribing controlled medications. I am shocked! I have been a patient of hers for many years and I have always known her to be well educated in best practices for pain management and addiction. She has always required pain contracts, support people (family or friend), for her addiction patients and as a pain patient she has always checked in with me about how I use my medicine and asks at every appointment if I have develop any risky behavior because more than anything she wants all of her patients to be safe, happy, and well adjusted. Dr. Norris is NOT the type of doctor that can be manipulated. She holds her patients accountable while also being compassionate.
So it looks to me like Dr. Norris is an educated, well-trained physician in pain management and substance use disorder. So why would she be targeted? Primarily, over the almost 20 years since my targeting, I have identified the following red flags
- Solo practitioner
- Minority practitioner
- Rural physician
- Takes care of the expendable populations: government insured, disabled, elderly, uninsured, poor—the patients the government would rather see dead.
- Elderly physician (with money and assets to confiscate)
Basically, the DOJ will attack any doctor in their district because that is what gives them a job, a salary, and potential promotion.
So if you are a doctor in America and prescribe as much as 2 Lortab per day to a patient, you could be a target. And if you are a patient receiving pain medicine from a doctor, you are putting their neck in the noose for government attack. But instead of supporting what will get the government out of the doctor’s office—what I teach—patients and their advocates are pushing attacks on the doctors who are eliminating controlled substances from their repertoire. The problem, Docs, is that if you prescribed over the last 7 years, you can still be attacked. If I seem angry that people won’t pay attention to what I say, you are right.
Linda Cheek is a teacher and disenfranchised medical doctor, turned activist, author, and speaker. A victim of prosecutorial misconduct and outright law-breaking of the government agencies DEA, DHHS, and DOJ, she hopes to be a part of exonerating all doctors illegally attacked through the Controlled Substance Act. She holds the key to success, as she can offset the government propaganda that drugs cause addiction with the truth: The REAL Cause of Drug Abuse.
Get a free gift to learn how the government is breaking the law to attack your doctor: Click here to get my free gift
I have been a patient of Dr. Norris since roughly 2016 and I have always known her to be well-educated in best practices for pain management and for the treatment of substance abuse disorder.
She requires urine screens, contracts, and family/friend support people for her SUD patients.
They claim she prescribed without a legitimate medical reason. I call complete BS on this purported claim.
I have a very long and well documented medical history of generalized anxiety disorder. I use to receive medication for it but around 2009 I was forced to choose between pain medication and anxiety medication. I was not given any other options to manage either one. So, I chose to have my pain treated.
When I became abandoned by the doctor I had had for many years Dr. Norris took me on as a patient when no one else would even let me walk through the door and when I’d be hung up on as soon as I mentioned pain.
A couple years into being her patient I began to have anxiety and severe panic attacks. I asked Dr. Norris if she’d prescribe medication.
Rather than just say sure and give me medication she talked with me about what I thought was triggering the attacks. She helped me with meditation techniques, Reiki, and physical manipulation. She kept working with me to help me build coping skills. She reminded me about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), which helped a tremendously.
My point is that Dr. Norris has NEVER been the type of doctor to willy-nilly prescribe medications!!! So, if their problem is that she prescribed opioids along with an anxiety medication they should be made aware that this is NOT something she does lightly and that she 100% must have believed those 3 patients needed those medications for their conditions because believe me she’s NOT the type of doctor that can be manipulated and I’d bet my life that she kept a very close eye on those patients.
I know because she has always checked in with me about how I use my medicines. She always took time to ask about my pain levels, was I using them as prescribed, were they still helping, and other such questions because ABOVE ALL ELSE Dr. Norris cares for the health and well-being of each and every patient under her care!
This new Prescription Opioid Task Force needs to justify its existence so with McCarthyism fervor they’ve decided to ferret out the doctors that they believe pose a risk simply because they base the treatment of their patients on an individual basis and prescribe above the 2016 CDC Opioid Guidelines and recommendations even though they aren’t law and even though Maine specifically wrote a palliative care exemption for chronic pain. They simply don’t want any doctors to treat their patients as individuals nor do they believe there’s a justified reason to treat pain and anxiety. This is practicing medicine without a license and they shouldn’t be allowed to continue to limit how a doctor can treat their patients!
Dr. Norris has been an outspoken advocate about the harms the 2016 CDC Opioid Guidelines have caused. She’s spoken publicly about the so-called unintended consequences and she has been an advocate for harm reduction. Things our government frowns upon!
I simply cannot say enough great things about her as a doctor and a human being. She has MORE humanity in her little finger than any other doctor I’ve ever met and considering I’ve been a chronic pain patient for 41 years that’s saying a lot.
No matter who you are or where you live I am asking you to please write a letter/email that explains how doctors like Norris are being unfairly targeted, how they help people no one else will help and/or just anything that will explain the reality of things and send it off to: The Maine DEA, the Maine Prescription Opioid Task Force, Governor Mills, the Maine Medical Board & whomever else you can think of. I want and need to flood their offices with letters of concern and support.
Dr. Norris if you see this please know we are praying for you, fighting for you, and will support you every single step of the way!! Hang in there & try not to let them get you down!
Letters will get you nowhere. Everyone needs to learn what I teach–the real cause of drug abuse and addiction and stop the propaganda that any drug, including opioids, causes addiction. We need to get the Controlled Substance Act repealed. As long as it and the DEA exists, doctors will be attacked and patients will die. So please, if you want this to stop and get Dr. Norris back, support me in getting this information out and come to the Clubhouse room. Clubhouse is explained on the homepage of DoC.
She was my doctor once. This is what I believe and know……she only cares about her patients! She cares what is best for them; whether recovery or pain management. The people who create the laws that she is to abide only care about the pharmaceutical companies and their bottom dollar. The people creating the legal parameters for how to treat patients have not one clue! This woman…..this doctor….this practitioner or human welfare actually knows! She lives it. Breathes it! Believes in her calling! Of course they want to attack her! I’m appalled that she is in this shameful suit!
October 28, 2022, a federal jury in Anchorage, AK convicted Advanced Nurse Practitioner Jessica Spayd of a total of ten (10) counts. 5 of these were causing the death of a person by prescribing outside normal and customary.
There was little actual evidence presented that Ms Spayd violated any law leading to the deaths. Instead, the entire trial was a character assassination of Ms. Spayd. The government prosecutors used anything and everything against her. They continually called her a drug addict and drug dealer that did not care for her patients and was only doing it “for the money”. At one point they even attacked her for owning her own business during her college days (she owned 4 ice cream trucks in the Chicago area) that allowed her to leave college debt-free. They attacked her for owning a home (1,224 sq ft condo) a car (2017 BMW X1), the building her practice operated in (converted home valued at approximately $500,000), and wanting to have “$1,000,000 saved by the time she retires”.
No proof was ever offered of her “drug addiction”, only repetitive mention by the prosecutor. Even though she had proof that while she does admit to alcoholism and a complex mental health condition, the prosecution prevented that from being entered on her behalf.
When Ms. Spayd’s defense attorney attempted to bring in witnesses (former patients) that would speak positively of her and her care, the government prosecutors successfully shut that down. This essentially left her without any defense.
Those of us that love and support Jessica made the mistake of believing the Justice System’s primary intent is to get to the truth. We do not live in a criminal world, and this was our first exposure to it.
Make no mistake. The truth need not apply. The only acceptable outcome is jail for all those wrongly charged and prosecuted. Patient health be damned.
Yes, Mr. Obrigewitch, you have the system figured out. Too bad, though, as you state, people think our justice system is just—until they experience it for themselves. The government still breaks the law, ignoring the Supreme Court, and will continue to do so. We must get the CSA repealed, take away actual immunity from these lawbreakers, and put them in prison. Can we do it in my lifetime?
Another innocent provider falsely accused!!! Our justice system is truly broken. These “investigators” ruin innocent lives daily and they don’t care! They know there are no repercussions for their behavior. I’ve seen this time and time again and it is not just done to Drs. It happens to ALL prescribers! What will society do when people no longer want to become medical providers? The collapse is near….