Dispensing by a practitioner outside the usual course of professional practice (Ruan v. United States)

OR · 21usc841:act.dispense

Under United States v. Moore (423 U.S. 122 (1975)) and Ruan v. United States (597 U.S. 450 (2022)), a registered physician or practitioner violates § 841(a)(1) by prescribing/dispensing outside the usual course of professional practice, and once the defendant meets the burden of producing evidence of authorization, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.

Exact element source

to manufacture, distribute, or dispense
Source: docroot/ir/usc/title21.jsonl#title21_sec841; Unicode character offsets [151:190] (end exclusive); SHA-256 ebaba73bf6e21a591f44bf851f24a052a5687813c505030cd9483e17753e9420.

All variants

Recorded DB variant labels, including zero-count variants
VariantDescriptionMerits instance blocksDistinct casesExample cases (up to 3 per group)
Unspecified variantNo variant assigned in the database.0
Satisfied 0; not satisfied 0; excluded context 1
0No counted merits examples

Excluded context examples: /f3d/767/0453-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2014 — comparator/merits

How courts decided this element

Annotation blocks, including explicitly excluded context
CaseElementHolding and scopeVariantExact source quotations
/f3d/767/0453-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2014Dispensing by a practitioner outside the usual course of professional practice (Ruan v. United States)not_reached
Excluded from merits counts
comparator / merits

claim: (a)(1)

The court restates the § 802(10) definition (delivery by or pursuant to the lawful order of a practitioner, including administering) but applies it to no conduct.
Unspecified variantNo source quotation recorded for this block.

Court interpretations

interpretation

Under the federal scheme, any administering of a controlled substance that falls under the federal definition for “dispense” must be “by, or pursuant to the lawful order of, a practitioner.”

/f3d/767/0453-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2014

Under the federal scheme, any administering of a controlled substance that falls under the federal definition for “dispense” must be “by, or pursuant to the lawful order of, a practitioner.”
Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_767.jsonl#/f3d/767/0453-01; Unicode character offsets [9699:9889] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7bf3b1d827eec8d7df6358d4749a34a273906690b6835d5cd27a842407c6624d.

Under United States v. Moore (423 U.S. 122 (1975)) and Ruan v. United States (597 U.S. 450 (2022)), a registered physician or practitioner violates § 841(a)(1) by prescribing/dispensing outside the usual course of professional practice, and once the defendant meets the burden of producing evidence of authorization, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.