original title: The pill messiah: Doug Smith claims he can end the opioid crisis. But will his troubled past catch up with him first?

new title is from the local matters newsletter where I got the story from https://www.ire.org/news/newsletters/

Douglas Randall Smith would have you believe he’s on the verge of a medical breakthrough that could end the opioid epidemic and keep millions of people alive.

He says he didn’t ask for this burden, but he alone sees a path toward a cure now blocked by corrupt government agencies and drug companies motivated by politics, ignorance and greed.

“I was the only person on this planet who recognized what was really going on,” Smith told The Post and Courier. “These are things that I don’t talk about because I don’t brag. That’s not the person that I am.”

Smith preaches that patients have been fed lies for decades by doctors pushing painkillers for profits. The FDA and DEA are in on the con, he says.

He tells them a test he created will prove they were never addicted in the first place — for a $600 fee.

He also tells them he’s a doctor.

He doesn’t say he was stripped of his medical license for overprescribing painkillers that killed at least one person.

Or that the man he hired to help run his telehealth addiction treatment clinic faces the same type of accusations, which led to the death of three patients.

Or that the IRS has been chasing him for years over taxes they say he never paid.

read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/special_reports/doug-smith-north-carolina-opioid-church-ekklasia-sozo-accused-fraud-telemedicine-lawsuit/article_0b0889dc-6c4d-11ee-b608-cbf70d011305.html