Florida sues Walgreens and CVS for its alleged role in the opioid crisis: NPR

Florida is suing Walgreens and CVS drugstore chains for their role in what the state calls "unreasonable efforts to increase demand and supply of opioids in Florida".

The Attorney General's Office Pam Bondi announced Friday that it has added the two companies to a lawsuit filed in May against opioid distributors and manufacturers, including the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, the maker of Percocet Endo Pharmaceuticals and Teva Pharmaceutical, one of the largest generics in the world. manufacturers.

All accused would have created an illegitimate demand for opioids while "illegally increasing the supply of opioids to meet this demand" and "were working together to inflate the supply and demand of drugs." Opioids, "says the trial.

Walgreens and CVS are two of the largest distributors of opioids in Florida, named after Amerisource distributors Bergen, Cardinal and McKesson.

In a press release, Bondi's office said that Walgreens and CVS "failed their obligations under Florida law to stop the suspicious orders of opioids they received" and that they "distributed unreasonable quantities of opioids to their pharmacies".

The amended lawsuit also accuses the specialty pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics of giving bribes to doctors in exchange for the prescription of its flagship product, fentanyl spray, Subsys.

"We will continue to search for companies that have played a role in the opioid crisis," Bondi's office said Friday. "Thousands of Floridians have suffered the actions of the accused."

In 2016, 2,798 Floridians died from opioid-related overdoses, according to the National Institute for Combating Drug Abuse.

Florida law states that pharmacists must refuse to issue medications that they believe are not related to an existing disease. Since 2006, Walgreens has shipped billions of doses of opioids into the state and has distributed billions of doses of its 820 stores in Florida, according to the lawsuit.

"Walgreens has agreed to spend $ 80 million to resolve a DEA investigation into inadequate record keeping and opioid diversion," the lawsuit said. "According to the DEA, Walgreens' drugstores in Florida would have each ordered more than one million units of oxycodone dosage in 2011, more than ten times the average amount."

The lawsuit also states that:

"According to public information, in Pasco County," a Walgreens drug distribution center sold 2.2 million tablets at a single Walgreens pharmacy in the small town of Hudson, a supply of about six months for each of its 12,000 residents. "North of Jupiter, Florida, more than 1.1 million pills have been shipped to each of two Fort Pierce Walgreens pharmacies."

With respect to CVS, the complaint states that the company, which has 754 stores in Florida, has distributed more than 700 million doses of opioids across the state between 2006 and 2014.

Like Walgreens, CVS also paid to resolve the DEA 's allegations that its pharmacists were filling false prescriptions for opioids and other drugs. In 2015, it agreed to pay $ 22 million to settle claims related to stores in Sanford, Florida.

"With their knowledge of their own sales and deliveries and industry-wide data, the defendants knew or ought to have known that the amount of opioids dispensed in Florida far exceeded the needs medical residents of Florida, "said the prosecution.

A spokesman for CVS told NBC that the lawsuit was "baseless".

"Walgreens said Saturday that it was not commenting on the pending lawsuits," reported NBC.

The Florida lawsuit comes at a time when more than 1,000 state governments and municipalities in the United States are suing opioid manufacturers and distributors. Last month, US District Judge David Ruiz in Cleveland had recommended that a major test case be allowed to appear in federal court next year.

The so-called "steeple-bell tower" case involving Summit County and other Ohio communities could influence how opioid trials are handled by the country's courts. At least three state-level prosecutions should also be tried in 2019.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 115 people die each day from an opioid overdose.

Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio contributed to this report.