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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The state of Florida has filed lawsuits against the country's two largest drugstore chains, Walgreens and CVS, alleging it has worsened the opioid crisis in the United States by overdoing painkillers and taking no action. precaution to stop illegal sales.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last Friday that she had added the companies to a lawsuit filed in court by the state last spring against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and several drug distributors. # 39; opioids.
Bondi said in a press release that CVS and Walgreens "played a role in creating the opioid crisis". She added that the companies had failed to stop the "suspicious orders of opioids" and "dispensed unreasonable amounts of opioids to their pharmacies." On average About 45 people die every day nationwide because of an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We will continue to look for the companies that have contributed to the creation of the opioid crisis," Bondi said, quoted by President Trump as the possible replacement for the recently dismissed US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "Thousands of Floridians have suffered the actions of the accused."
CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis called the suit "unfounded" in a statement on Saturday. He said the company trains its pharmacists and their assistants about their responsibilities when distributing controlled substances and gives them tools to detect potentially illegal sales.
"In recent years, CVS has taken many steps to strengthen existing safeguards to deal with the opioid epidemic in the country," said DeAngelis.
Walgreens said Saturday that he was not commenting on the pending lawsuits.
Until a police crackdown at the beginning of the decade, Florida was known for its so-called breadmakers. Drug traffickers across the country sent associates to clinics where unscrupulous doctors ordered opioids to treat their wounds and illnesses. According to federal officials, 90 of the 100 largest opioid prescribers in the country were Florida doctors.
After receiving the prescriptions, the fake patients would buy the pills at Florida pharmacies – state law states that pharmacists must refuse to carry out prescriptions they suspect that they are not used to valid purposes. Most opioids would then be removed from the state to be resold illegally at huge prices, which would create a drug crisis in many communities in the eastern United States.
According to the complaint, since 2006, Walgreens has been distributing billions of doses of opioids in its Florida pharmacies. The Illinois chain is the largest pharmacy chain in the country and has more than 13,200 stores worldwide.
The company has distributed 2.2 million opioid tablets from its store in Hudson, a city of 12,000 in the Tampa area, and in an unidentified city of 3,000, sold 285 000 tablets in a month, announced the lawsuit. In some stores, its opioid sales have increased six-fold in two years. The company disbursed $ 80 million five years ago to solve a federal investigation focused on inadequate accounting for its opioid sales in Florida, which allowed the pills to reach the black market.
Florida's charges against CVS were more general, claiming that it had sold 700 million doses of opioids between 2006 and 2014, including outrageous sales in Hudson and two other nearby cities. CVS based in Woonsocket, R.I., has more than 9,800 stores.
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