DR. SUTHERLAND IS THE REAL VICTIM

Your comments on the sentencing of Dr. Franklin Sutherland ("Downward
departure in sentencing was wrong," Dec. 3), miss the point. Why should the
enforcement resources of the federal government, more appropriately
directed toward sophisticated crooks and organized crime, be expended on an
otherwise innocuous rural doctor whose crime was to allow himself to be
manipulated by drug-seeking patients into a pattern of prescribing
narcotics? Such occurrences are common, and can be adequately addressed by
state medical boards. To insist on a prison sentence nearly twice Al
Capone's is disproportionate to the point of barbarism.

Dr. Sutherland is the victim, rather than the beneficiary of the
discrimination that has occurred here. Stung by rising public outcry that
the futile war on drugs has unfairly impacted the poor and nonwhite, drug
enforcement bureaucrats prize the scalps of affluent professionals who
serve to dress up the statistics a bit. What can't be accomplished in
numbers can be made up in courtroom drama and sensational publicity.

The prosecution's nonsensical comparison of Dr. Sutherland's undisciplined
prescribing to crack cocaine trafficking evokes the irony that the
defendant might have fared better had he been caught at the latter offense,
in which case he may have extricated himself by snitching on another
conspirator. This doesn't work when the "big fish" is a legitimate
pharmaceutical firm, now consulted by a former U.S. attorney who until most
recently was locally engaged in prosecuting the company's addicted consumers.

The failure of organized medicine to speak out against this and other
modern-day show trials confirms your concerns about the debased condition
of the professionals. Our denunciations are rightfully directed at this crowd.

Mett Ausley Jr., MD

Lake Waccamaw, N.C.