The state of Florida is suing the nation’s two largest drugstore chains, Walgreens and CVS, alleging they added to the state and national opioid crisis by overselling painkillers and not taking the necessary precautions to stop illegal sales.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she added the companies to a state-court lawsuit filed last spring against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and several opioid distributors.
In a press release, Bondi said that CVS and Walgreens “played a role in creating the opioid crisis.” She said the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids” and “dispensed unreasonable quantities of opioids from their pharmacies.”
“We will continue to pursue those companies that played a role in creating the opioid crisis,” said Bondi. “Thousands of Floridians have suffered as a result of the actions of the defendants.”
On average, about 45 people die nationally each day because of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the lawsuit, Walgreens dispensed billions of opioid dosages from its Florida pharmacies since 2006. The lawsuit claims that the company distributed 2.2 million opioid tablets from its store in Hudson, a Tampa-area town of 12,000, and sold 285,000 pills in a month in one unidentified town of 3,000.
The lawsuit also claims that the company paid $80 million five years ago to resolve a federal investigation that centered on inadequate record keeping of its Florida opioid sales that allowed the pills to be sold on the black market.
In the case of CVS, the lawsuit claims that the company sold 700 million opioid dosages between 2006 and 2014, including outsized sales in Hudson and two other nearby towns.
In response, CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis called the lawsuit “without merit.” The company trains its pharmacists and their assistants about their responsibilities when dispensing controlled substances and gives them tools to detect potentially illegal sales, according to DeAngelis.
“Over the past several years, CVS has taken numerous actions to strengthen our existing safeguards to help address the nation’s opioid epidemic,” DeAnglelis said.
Walgreens claimed it doesn’t comment on pending lawsuits.
By: Maytinee Kramer
