US Department of Justice sues Walmart over opioid sales

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday filed a civil lawsuit against Walmart, the world's biggest retailer, for knowingly filling thousands of invalid prescriptions for opioids. 

In a press conference Tuesday, Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the DOJ's civil division, said Walmart's "unlawful" activity helped fuel the opioid crisis that has killed nearly 450,000 people since 1999. The suit noted that Walmart's activities stretch back as far as 2013.

Walmart stocks fell 1.5% on the news. The company did not respond to requests for a statement.

Walmart, which has 5,000 pharmacies across the US, filed its own preemptive suit against the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in October, claiming the government was putting its pharmacists in an impossible position by forcing them to choose between accepting a physician's "medical judgement and fill the opioid prescription, or second guess the doctor's judgement and refuse to fill it." Walmart is asking a federal judge to declare the DOJ suit baseless and has threatened to sue for damages.

But the DOJ suit alleges: "As one off 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. 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 at those pharmacies." 

DOJ suit could force Walmart to pay billions

Ultimately, the DOJ could seek billions of dollars in fines for what it says were Walmart's violations of the Controlled Substances Act. Walmart could face penalties of up to $67,627 (€55,592) for each illegal prescription that it filled, as well as $15,691 for each suspicious prescription it failed to report to authorities. The DOJ says, "For years, Walmart kept in place a system that it knew was failing to adequately detect and report suspicious orders," going on to charge that the retailer had "unlawfully filled thousands upon thousands of invalid controlled-substance prescriptions."

"Walmart managers put enormous pressure on pharmacists to fill prescriptions," demanding they filled high-volumes of what they knew to be invalid prescriptions "as fast as possible," while at the same time curtailing their ability to refuse to fill orders they knew to be invalid.  

 

js/aw (AFP, AP, Reuters)