Vin Suprynowicz

From the mailbag

Another Fearless Drug Warrior is writing my boss at the daily Review-Journal, trying to get me fired.

One “Scott Miller” wrote in on March 12:

I must state upfront that I am not a regular reader of any Stephens publications and am not likely to become one in the foreseeable future. Because of your publications political fanaticism that colors every thing published (and that you still give a voice to the likes of Mitchell and Frederck), I active avoid any support of Stephens Media.

If you are still reading at this point, I have some corrections to Mr. Suprynowicz’s latest missive. He wrote on 3/10/12 about a trial in Las Vegas of a Dr. Stoermer who was accused of over prescription pain killers. In his typical one sided and vitriolic fashion he paints every action and hypothetical motive of the Government as evil and Dr. Stoermer as the unjustly accused (and later aquitted) saint. He was strident but still within the bounds of legitimate commentary.

It is at this point he crosses the line from commentary to fabrication.

1) While I do not have access to legal databases, I could find no media record of this travesty of a trial (including in the RJ).

2) He then wrote, ” But there were hard feelings. The federal drug police declined to renew Dr. Stoermer’s federal license to write painkiller prescriptions, claiming they had a “different standard of evidence” than that used by juries.” This is a lie. I have attached a PDF from the Federal Register that shows that Dr. Stoermer’s DEA license was not renewed because his prescription writing privileges were already suspended in Nevada. They then declined his appeal because it was not timely. This was reviewed by a Federal court and they agreed with the DEA.

3) Further he wrote, “Unable to earn his livelihood here, he was forced to return to his native Australia.” Well that is not the whole story. If you look at his NV medical record (also attached here). You will see he may have returned to Australia. However, he returned here and had his medical license suspended once again because he did not report that his license had been revoked in Australia. It is a little hard to make the leap Mr. Suprynowicz does that a man who has had his license taken away at least three times on two continents is the victim.

There is also the question: if this is a problem today, why are the two things he cites from 1994 and 2000?

As I said I am unlikely to ever be your customer. But I hope you can understand why. While there is wide latitude in opinion, you should not allow your columnists to just make things up out of whole cloth or spew what ever vile they have a mind to.

I just thought I would share my thoughts with you in case you had a mind to be more than the newspaper of record for the “Black Helicopter” set.

Thus concludes the hate-filled screed of “Scott Miller.”

# # #

Regular readers will recall that I personally interviewed DEA spokesman Ralph Lockridge over the phone, when Dietrich Stoermer found local pharmacies were “bouncing” his prescriptions despite his unanimous jury acquittal, back in early 1995.

Fearless Drug Warrior Lockridge told me they declined to let Dr. Stoermer re-apply for his “DEA number” a few months after the trial (they claim he had let it lapse while he was on trial, though Dr. Stoermer showed me his cashed-and-canceled check), because their standards are different than the standards needed to win a jury conviction.

Specifically, Lockridge the Los Angeles DEA spokesman told me “The jury did not find him ‘innocent’; they found him ‘not guilty,’ There’s a difference.”

Again, note this was not a “hung jury,” but a unanimous acquittal.

So much for my “lie.” I documented all this in my Review-Journal columns at the time, and that series of columns is substantially reprinted on pp. 45-52 of my 1999 book “Send in the Waco Killers” (it actually leads the chapter on the Drug War), of which more than 14,000 copies are in print.

Funny that no one else has called me on my “lie” over the past 14 years. Maybe that’s because every sentence is attributed, mostly to such local Las Vegas attorneys as David Crosby and Lamond Mills, as well as to Mr. Lockridge, the government spokesman.

I cited the 1994 case because it HAPPENED RIGHT HERE IN LAS VEGAS, and the jury acquittal stands as proof that the federal government was and is attempting to have a chilling effect on the ability and willingness of doctors to prescribe painkillers. In fact, it’s doubly damning that they haven’t changed their callous, deadly approach in 19 years.

Meantime, the fact that this same gang of murderous, make-them-commit-suicide zealots — fueled in their endeavors by a bottomless reservoir of looted tax revenues — have pursued the good doctor across two continents, using the punishments they improperly inflicted him in each PREVIOUS jurisdiction (defying and countermanding the unanimous wishes of his citizen jury) as grounds for halt him helping sufferers in each NEW jurisdiction, is supposed to prove the DOCTOR is a monster?

I would submit that, after 99 years of doing no good but causing massive harm, the Fearless Drug Warriors are losing, and getting desperate. I wonder in which agency Mr. Miller, who revealingly uses capital letters to spell “Federal” and “the Government,” is employed.

By the way, as it happens, the government IS completely wrong, and Dietrich Stoermer quite literally IS a hero, not only to hundreds of chronic pain patients who were given a few more years of decent life, not only because the government has not one iota of constitutional authority to “license” or decline to “license” medical practice or deny useful medications to any consenting adult, but also in the sense that elements of his story will be easily recognized in the background of the character Dr. Helmut Stauffer in my novel “The Black Arrow.” Thus, the account of Dietrich Stoermer’s decency and heroism will live on, generations after Fearless Drug Warrior “Scott Miller” and his bloodthirsty ilk sift away, forgotten piles of hate-filled dust.