Las Vegas pharmacist testifies at his federal drug trial

A Las Vegas pharmacist accused of helping a local doctor send prescription painkillers onto the streets has given hours of testimony aimed at shifting blame away from himself and onto two rogue employees of the pharmacy he managed.

Jason Smith, who managed Lam’s Pharmacy until his indictment on drug charges six years ago, began his testimony Friday and still had not left the witness stand when court adjourned Monday in the ongoing trial against him, 93-year-old Dr. Henri Wetselaar and medical assistant David Litwin.

Smith, the first of the defendants to testify, gave jurors his side of what the government alleges was a profitable operation through which Wetselaar supplied a handful of drug dealers with bottles of oxycodone to sell on the streets.

“When a doctor’s practicing pain management … they have those drugs that they like to use,” Smith testified, referencing the stream of oxycodone and Xanax prescriptions, with Wetselaar’s signature, that were filled at his pharmacy. “Patients on pain medication usually have a lot of anxiety.”

The government has called two self-admitted drug dealers to testify at trial, and they both said Lam’s was their go-to pharmacy for filling dozens of prescriptions Wetselaar wrote for people they had recruited to pose as patients. Smith, in response to questions about those two loyal pharmacy customers, gave answers that placed blame on two of his former cashiers.

One of the employees was Jennifer Lopez, who was referred to in court as “J-Lo.” Smith said he fired her for “general overall incompetence” and for not collecting on the balances of a house account maintained by Carolyn Allen, one of the drug dealers who previously testified as a government witness.

Smith said Allen identified herself to the pharmacy as a caregiver and retired nurse who often needed to pick up prescriptions for patients.

The other employee was identified in court only as “James.” He died, Smith said, of an apparent oxycodone overdose. Oxycodone is the same painkiller Wetselaar is accused of prescribing unlawfully.

Jason Kutz, the other admitted drug dealer whom prosecutors called to testify, “was only dealing with James,” Smith said.

“When you’ve got a bad apple, since there’s J-Lo up there, or James, it doesn’t work,” Smith said. “I was in the back for most of that time.”

But, Smith added, the fact that Kutz and Allen were filling prescriptions for other people was not against the law. “You can’t make a law against it. … It’s impractical,” he said, mentioning that some people do not have adequate means of transportation to pick up prescriptions.

Smith was critical of his former employees, but he stopped short of implicating his co-defendants, Wetselaar and Litwin, in criminal activity.

At one point, when Assistant U.S. Attorney Cristina Silva highlighted a prescription record that showed Wetselaar prescribed 180 oxycodone pills for 30 days, Smith replied: “Those dosages are in the norm. … I can’t show that because all the evidence has been destroyed from Lam’s.”

It was unclear what evidence Smith was referring to, as only a limited number of prescription records relevant to the case were highlighted in court.

A previous version of this story incorrectly quoted Jason Smith’s testimony about the destruction of evidence.

Contact Jenny Wilson at jenwilson@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Follow @jennydwilson on Twitter.