A South African-born doctor, who is one of several medics who prescribed an array of heavy painkillers to actress Winona Ryder in the run-up to her shoplifting arrest last year, has had his medical licence revoked after an official investigation found he had earned a fortune providing celebrities with controlled substances on an "cash-and-carry" basis.
According to documents made public on Tuesday, the Medical Board of California severely chastised the behaviour of Dr Jules Lusman, a South African-born physician ostensibly specialising in tattoo and hair removal.
Lusman's clients included not only Ryder, identified by the medical board as "ET" (for Emily Thompson, one of the actress's pseudonyms, according to her prosecutors), but also a certain "fairly well known musician", "CL", who used to be married to a Mr C, now dead.
Numerous media organisations have identified "CL" as Courtney Love, the widow of Kurt Cobain and a friend of Ryder's, who has talked frankly about her drug addictions in the past. Love would neither confirm nor deny that she was "CL".
The medical board said Lusman became known in celebrity circles for his willingness to make after-hours calls at private homes and hotels and write prescriptions for opiates and hypnotic drugs as well as syringes, enabling his patients to inject themselves.
He would habitually charge $1 000 (about R9 000) or more for such house-calls, which involved only the briefest of physical examinations.
The board's report alleged that he was paid in cash and either did not record the transaction at all, or else recorded receiving a much lower fee.
His speciality, the report went on, was catering to "the demands of wealthy and/or famous drug-seekers for prescription narcotics which would otherwise have to be obtained on the street".
Lusman was formally struck off the medical register last Friday, the same day Ryder was sentenced to three years' probation and 60 days of community service for stealing designer clothing and accessories worth more than $5 000 from the Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills.
According to Ryder's probation report, which separately identified Lusman as one of her physicians, she was found to be carrying eight different prescription painkillers as well as a hypodermic needle at the time of her arrest. The medical board said Lusman had prescribed numerous narcotics to her over the previous three months, including vicoprofen, percoset, meperedine and flexaril.
The medical board castigated Lusman for "extreme departure from the standard of care" and he has been ordered to a pay a $75 000 fine. He now faces possible criminal charges for his conduct, but has left the United States.
He continues to maintain he did nothing wrong, either in Ryder's case or anybody else's.
"I certainly did not believe at the time I attended to her professionally that she was in an abusive situation," Lusman told an ABC news crew from his mother's home in Cape Town. "I would never, ever prescribe a person multiple medications simultaneously."
This is not the first time he has fallen foul of the medical authorities, however. In 1986 he was denounced for "disgraceful misconduct" in over-prescribing to patients in South Africa. He left for the United States in 1990. - The London Independent