Gold Coast doctor who once sat on drug council pleads guilty to drug charges

A RESPECTED doctor who once sat on the Gold Coast Drug Council board has pleaded guilty to drug charges after a “spectacular fall from grace”.

***Southport Courthouse. Meagan Weymes has ID*** NO BYLINE PLEASE. Solicitor Andrew Moloney and Peita Melville

A RESPECTED doctor who once sat on the Gold Coast Drug Council board has pleaded guilty to drug charges after a “spectacular fall from grace”.

Peita Louise Melville became a doctor after battling a six-year heroin addiction in her early 20s, then rose to serve as vice-president of the Gold Coast Drug Council.

Yesterday in the Southport Magistrates Court the 37-year-old pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine, possession of utensils and to prescribing a controlled drug when not endorsed to do so.
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Screen Grabs from Gold Coast Drug Council Inc web page, with Peita Melville as Vice President.

The court was told that in February, 2013, police executed a search warrant at a Broadbeach address and found 0.6 grams of methamphetamine, a set of digital scales, a pipe and a spoon that had been used to heat the drug.

Then, in April last year Melville wrote a prescription for the morphine-like drug, MS Contin, despite not having the authority to prescribe drugs.

Peita Melville leaves Southport Court.

Police prosecutor Trudi Jobberns said a man presented the prescription at a pharmacy in Miami but raised suspicion after he left without collecting the billed script.

“Attending police knew of Melville and were suspicious of her ability at the time to authorise and write medical scripts,” she said.

“Subsequent inquiries with the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency revealed that while she was a qualified and registered doctor, she was currently suspended from practising and prescribing medications.”

Ms Jobberns said Melville told police she sourced drugs through a woman named Sue who regularly made requests for her to write false scripts for her and her friends.

She said on April 26, Melville claimed she was in a vehicle to buy drugs with Sue in Miami when she was warned to get the people in the house “on side” and felt intimidated.

“She then claims a male person asked her to write a script and given what Sue had told her, she felt she had to,” Ms Jobberns said.

Melville also faced court in September last year after she was charged with other drug offences.

Solicitor Andrew Moloney said Melville was a single mother-of-two who had struggled with mental health issues.

He said the offences occurred around the time of a relapse into drugs.

“This has been regrettably a spectacular fall from grace for her,” he said.

Mr Moloney, who declared he had known Melville for eight or nine years, said the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency had been in contact with Melville and she had provided regular urine tests to show she was clear of drugs.

Magistrate Kerry Magee said Melville had battled a heroin addiction from the age of 19 to 25 then spent nine years sober before her relapse into methamphetamine use.

She said since the relapse Melville had undergone significant and lengthy periods of hospitalisation and presented drug-free urine tests.

She was fined $600 for the offences and no conviction was recorded.