This case is here under the Criminal Appeals Act, 34 Stat. 1246. The statute involved is the Narcotic Drug Act of December 17, 1914, c. 1, § 2, a, 38 Stat. 785, 786.
This statute in § 2, subdivision a, makes it an offense to sell, barter, exchange, or give away any of the narcotic drugs named in the act except in pursuance of a written order of the person to whom such article is sold, bartered, exchanged, or given, on a form to be issued in blank for that purpose by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. It is further provided that nothing in the section shall apply to the dispensing or distribution of any of the drugs to a patient by a registered physician in the course of his professional practice only, or to the sale, dispensing or distribution of said drugs by a dealer to a consumer in pursuance of a written prescription issued by a physician registered under the act.
The question is: Do the acts charged in this indictment constitute an offense within the meaning of the statute? As we have seen, the statute contains an exception to the effect that it shall not apply to the dispensing or distribution of such drugs to a patient by a registered physician in the course of his professional practice only, nor to the sale, dispensing or distribution of the drugs by a dealer to a consumer under a written prescription by a registered physician. The rule applicable to such statutes is that it is enough to charge facts sufficient to show that the accused is not within the exception. United States v. Cook, 17 Wall. 168, 173.
The District Judge who heard this case was of the opinion that prescriptions in the regular course of practice did not include the indiscriminate doling out of narcotics in such quantity to addicts as charged in the indictment, but out of deference to what he deemed to be the view of a local District Judge in another case announced his willingness to follow such opinion until the question could be passed upon by this court, and sustained the demurrer. In our opinion the District Judge who heard the case was right in his conclusion and should have overruled the demurrer.
Former decisions of this court have held that the purpose of the exception is to confine the distribution of these drugs to the regular and lawful course of professional practice, and that not everything called a prescription is necessarily such. Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96; Jin Fuey Moy v. United States, 254 U.S. 189.
"Manifestly the phrases `to a patient' and `in the course of his professional practice only' are intended to confine the immunity of a registered physician, in dispensing the narcotio drugs mentioned in the act, strictly within the appropriate bounds of a physician's professional practice, and not to extend it to include a sale to a dealer or a distribution intended to cater to the appetite or satisfy the craving of one addicted to the use of the drug. A `prescription' issued for either of the latter purposes protects neither the physician who issues it nor the dealer who knowingly accepts and fills it. Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96."
It is enough to sustain an indictment that the offense be described with sufficient clearness to show a violation of law, and to enable the accused to know the nature and cause of the accusation and to plead the judgment, if one be rendered, in bar of further prosecution for the same offense. If the offense be a statutory one, and intent or knowledge is not made an element of it, the indictment need not charge such knowledge or intent. United States v. Smith, 2 Mason, 143; United States v. Miller, Fed. Cas. 15,775; United States v. Jacoby, Fed. Cas. 15,462; United States v. Ulrici, Fed. Cas. 16,594, (opinion by Miller, Circuit Justice); United States v. Bayaud, 16 Fed. 376, 383-4; United States v. Jackson, 25 Fed. 548, 550; United States v. Guthrie, 171 Fed. 528, 531; United States v. Balint, ante, 250.
It may be admitted that to prescribe a single dose, or even a number of doses, may not bring a physician within the penalties of the act; but what is here charged is that the defendant physician by means of prescriptions has enabled one, known by him to be an addict, to obtain from a pharmacist the enormous number of doses contained in 150 grains of heroin, 360 grains of morphine,
We hold that the acts charged in the indictment constituted an offense within the terms and meaning of the act. The judgment of the District Court to the contrary should be reversed.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS and MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS, dissenting.
If this case raised a question of pleading I should go far in agreeing to disregard technicalities that were deemed vital a hundred or perhaps even fifty years ago. But we have nothing to do with pleading as such, and as the Judge below held the indictment bad it can be sustained only upon a construction of the statute different from that adopted below.
The indictment for the very purpose of raising the issue that divides the Court alleges in terms that the drugs
It seems to me impossible to construe the statute as tacitly making such acts, however foolish, crimes, by saying that what is in form a prescription and is given honestly in the course of a doctor's practice, and therefore, so far as the words of the statute go, is allowed in terms, is not within the words, is not a prescription and is not given in the course of practice, if the Court deems the doctor's faith in his patient manifestly unwarranted. It seems to me wrong to construe the statute as creating a crime in this way without a word of warning. Of course the facts alleged suggest an indictment in a different form, but the Government preferred to trust to a strained interpretation of the law rather than to the finding of a jury upon the facts. I think that the judgment should be affirmed.
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