Before his conviction, Hurwitz had a series of running battles with the Virginia Board of Medicine which, in 2003 found fault with some of his prescriptions but also held that all were written "in good faith".
Hurwitz maintains that he was duped by his patients, and that the enforcement tactics being applied in the War on Drugs unfairly target law-abiding doctors, leading to a situation where doctors must choose between providing compassionate care and accepting personal liability for what their patients do with prescribed medications.
His case has potentially serious ramifications among all practitioners of pain medicine, and is considered by many to be a drastic example of the overreach of anti-drug law enforcement efforts.
[1] His conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on August 22, 2006, due to errors by the trial judge that essentially prevented the jury from considering Hurwitz's defense — that he was prescribing the medication in good faith as part of the regular practice of medicine.
[2] On April 27, 2007 jurors found William E. Hurwitz guilty of 16 counts of drug trafficking and determined that he prescribed massive quantities of medicine to patients in chronic pain.