Carrollton physician Dr. Phil Astin III was sentenced in Newnan May 12 by U.S. District Judge Jack T. Kemp to serve 10 years in federal prison for his January conviction on 175 counts of illegally dispensing prescription drugs from 2002 until his arrest in 2007. Astin was the personal physician for wrestler and Fayette County resident Chris Benoit.

Astin pleaded guilty to offenses relating to 19 patients who received hundreds of illegal prescriptions for methadone, Percocet, Oxycontin, M.S. Contin, Demerol, Lorcet, Ritalin, Vicodin, Klonopin, Vicoprofen, Xanax, Adderall and Soma, according to U.S. Attorney David Nahmias.

Through his plea agreement, Astin further admitted that the prescriptions he issued resulted in the death of one patient when she overdosed on the drugs. Finally, Astin admitted that he wrote and filled 16 prescriptions for Lortab, Xanax, Dexedrine, Adderall, and Ritalin in the names of two patients without their knowledge, said Nahmias. 

During the sentencing hearing Tuesday, prosecutors and witnesses described the scope of Astin's illegal conduct, which involved dozens of patients and illegal prescriptions for abused drugs from as early as 1999. Some patients received popularly abused painkillers, amphetamines, anxiety medications, and muscle relaxers for more than five years without a legitimate medical examination, diagnosis, or monitoring by Astin, Nahmias said.

A pharmacologist explained the severe damage that these drugs inflict upon the body, as well as the overwhelming physical and psychological dependence that results from abusing the drugs. 

According to the evidence presented during the sentencing hearing, from approximately May 2002 until the date of his arrest in July 2007, Astin intentionally wrote prescriptions for controlled substances that were not for a legitimate medical purpose and were not in the usual course of a doctor's professional practice, said Nahmias.

Astin dispensed these prescriptions without conducting the appropriate physical examinations and diagnoses to justify the prescriptions and, as a result, many of the patients who received these illegitimate prescriptions became addicts, Nahmias said.

The evidence showed that Astin's notoriety grew among pill-abusing patients from across Georgia, Alabama, and other states, as well as professional wrestlers, according to Nahmias.  

Nahmias said Astin also admitted to writing multiple prescriptions for the same drug on the same date, sometimes as many as four simultaneous Percocet prescriptions to the same patient for the same 30-day period, and wrote undated prescriptions as well. Federal law requires medical practitioners to sign and date each prescription for controlled substances on the date that it is issued.

Finally, Astin dispensed methadone as a maintenance therapy without the proper license to dispense drugs in this fashion and in quantities and durations that readily perpetuated the addiction of these patients said Nahmias.

The evidence presented at the sentencing hearing included descriptions of several of the patients to whom Astin wrote illegal drugs. On June 20, 2007, one patient overdosed on Lortab, Xanax, and Soma that were prescribed by Astin and died from acute toxicity of the drugs, and prosecutors further described another patient who died, in part, from an overdose of Soma that had been prescribed by Astin, said Nahmias.

Other evidence included instances where Astin was alerted to the abuse and addiction of certain patients, yet continued to give them prescriptions for years, he said. 

“The long prison sentence imposed today reflects the egregious conduct over many years by this doctor, whose willingness to give powerful and dangerous prescription drugs to addicts harmed his patients and our community. We hope that this sentence and the wide attention this case has received will convince other doctors not to participate in prescription drug abuse, which is a violation of their oath that can lead them to years behind bars,” Nahmias said.

Astin was officially linked to prescribing a large amount of anabolic steroids to wrestler Chris Benoit, who police believe killed his wife and son, then himself at their Fayette County home June 23-25, 2007.

This case was investigated by Diversion Investigators of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), and the Fayette County Sheriff Office Tactical Narcotics Team with the assistance of the West Georgia Drug Task Force, and the Carroll County Sheriff's Department.