NEW YORK – The United States Justice Department sued Walmart over its role in the opioid crisis yesterday, alleging the giant retailer wrongly filled prescriptions and worsened a public health disaster.
The suit accuses Walmart of irresponsible handling of orders, filling thousands of “invalid” prescriptions and ignoring red flags about problem orders as it sacrificed public health in a drive to boost sales.
Authorities could seek up to billions of dollars in penalties in the litigation that followed a multi-year investigation, the Justice Department said in a press release.
“As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids,” said Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division.
“Instead, for years, it did the opposite – filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies.”
Walmart, which initiated its own suit against the Justice Department in October, called the charges baseless yesterday.
It accused US authorities of embarking on a “transparent attempt to shift blame from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place”. – AFP, December 23, 2020
