Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley (R) is making headlines for all the wrong reasons after prescribing opiods to his second cousin who also happened to be his lover.
Hensley, an author on the state's infamous, anti-LGBTQ "Don't Say Gay" bill, apparently has no problem with committing medical malpractice to supply his second cousin/lover with drugs.
Hensley's lawyer offered a simple defense of the State Senator's prescriptions: he's the only doctor around.
"There are not many people in the county who haven't been to see Dr. Hensley, and she was one of them. Half of the county are Hensleys. Everyone there knows everyone."
"There were multiple relationships and the physician-patient relationship was only one and somewhat incidental to the others."
Investigations reveal that from 2011 to 2018, Hensley wrote 47 prescriptions for opioids to his second cousin/lover, never requiring any additional tests to screen for addiction and often failing to record his prescriptions in her medical file.
Though Hensley's behavior isn't criminal, state health officials have charged him with violating medical standards which bar physicians from prescribing drugs to their own family members.
If found guilty, Hensley could lose his ability to prescribe medicine.
Even if Hensley manages to dodge any punishment related to medical malpractice, he's likely to face retribution from the voters in his town, where large newspaper ads have recently featured a list of the allegations against him with the headline "We Can Do Better."
One has to imagine that's probably true.
