DOCTOR DEFENDS HIS PRESCRIBING OF PAINKILLERS

RALEIGH -- A doctor accused in 23 drug-overdose deaths defended himself
yesterday as an unconventional practitioner bucking the medical and
regulatory establishment.

Dr. Joseph Talley has already lost his federal license to prescribe
narcotics and now finds himself fighting state regulators who want to strip
his license to practice medicine.

Bob Clay, an attorney representing the Cleveland County doctor in a hearing
that began yesterday before the North Carolina Medical Board, portrayed his
client as a believer in using prescription painkillers to treat long-term,
chronic pain.

Talley had the best interests of his patients in mind and was not trying to
get rich, Clay said. He said that Talley earned $140,000 in 2000, the most
he had ever made.

"He can treat people with sore throats and make just as much money as he
does with this," Clay said.

State medical regulators began efforts to take Talley's medical license
after federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided Talley's office
in December. The federal agency says that 23 of his patients died from
overdoses.

Talley, 64, hasn't been charged criminally. He denies wrongdoing, admitting
only to self-prescribing the diet drug Pondimin and stockpiling it when
patients returned unused pills.

A pharmacy operated by another man in a trailer behind Talley's office has
for years led the nation in prescriptions of OxyContin, state regulators said.

At the hearing, medical-board attorney Bill Breeze produced case files that
showed that Talley had prescribed opium-based drugs including morphine and
OxyContin without giving patients a full physical examination.