BLAND COUNTY DOCTOR'S TRIAL CONTINUES

ABINGDON _ A former drug addict told a federal jury Thursday that a Bland
County doctor prescribed powerful narcotic painkillers for her sore back
despite her history of drug abuse.

Elizabeth Diane Ritchie of Bluefield, W.Va., testified that she began
seeing Dr. Freeman Lowell Clark, 43, after another doctor refused to
prescribe her any more Lortab or Lorcet pills.

"I was still in pain, and my family said (Clark) would write narcotics,"
Ritchie said, adding that several relatives already had been receiving
potent painkillers from the doctor.

Ritchie, who testified that she has been to drug rehab 13 or 14 times, said
Clark knew about her problem.

"I told him I was snorting the pills," said the petite former fast-food
worker, who has undergone three surgeries to her back and neck. "It just
seemed like it worked faster."

Clark is standing trial this week in federal court on 298 counts of
prescribing narcotic painkillers without a legitimate medical purpose. If
convicted, he faces hundreds of years in prison and millions of dollars in
fines.

More than a third of the charges involve OxyContin, which has been linked
to more than 120 overdose deaths nationwide. Abuse of the drug has reached
epidemic levels in the region, authorities say, and more than three dozen
Southwest Virginians have died of overdoses.

Clark's alleged offenses occurred between April 1999 and March 2000 at his
clinic, which first was in Bluefield, Va., and later moved to Wytheville
then Bland.

Ritchie said she followed Clark each time his clinic moved and sometimes
would wait hours to see him.

"He was a good doctor," she said, taking full blame for her own addiction
problem. "He took time with you."

Also testifying was Mary Sievert, Clark's fiancee and office manager, who
said most of the clinic's patients were there for pain medications.

"The majority of the patients did seek pain help," she said.

The office sometimes would stay open well past midnight, with patients
waiting up to 10 hours to see the doctor, Sievert said under direct
questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Ramseyer.

Some patients would show up uninvited at the couple's home to request
refill prescriptions, and others worked in the office on a volunteer basis,
Sievert said.

She said she fired one patient-volunteer after hearing a rumor that the
woman was selling her prescription narcotics from the clinic.

"I became very upset, and I did confront her rather quickly, and she didn't
work there anymore," Sievert said.

The office manager herself depended on pain medications Clark prescribed to
alleviate persistent migraine headaches, she said.

She said she took seven or eight narcotic Lortab pills daily at one point
but finally quit because the drug's sedative effects were interfering with
her active lifestyle and ability to think clearly.

"I still have headaches, but I understand better how to control them now,"
she said.

Also testifying Thursday was an expert prosecution witness, Dr. Adam
Steinberg, an Abingdon internist who said narcotics prescriptions issued
for Clark's patients were unwarranted.

"It's not a legitimate medical purpose to issue a narcotic for a known drug
abuser," said Steinberg of one patient who had tested positive for
hepatitis C _ a disease commonly spread through contaminated needles used
by intravenous drug abusers.

Many patients who received narcotics had no objective, documented source of
pain, he said.

Steinberg's testimony is scheduled to continue today at 9 a.m.