Judge Holds Walgreens Liable For Opioid Crisis San Francisco

Judge Holds Walgreens Liable For Opioid Crisis San Francisco

Introduction

Walgreens can be held accountable for contributing to San Francisco's opioid crisis, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday, because the pharmacy chain over-prescribed highly addictive drugs for years without adequate oversight and failed to recognize and report suspicious orders as required by law.

The city attorney for San Francisco claimed that the pharmacy chain routinely failed to comply with the federal Controlled Substances Act, failed to track opioid prescriptions, prevented pharmacists from vetting prescriptions, and failed to notice the numerous warning signs of doctors and other individuals who were dramatically over-prescribing. He claimed that Walgreens saturated our streets with opioids as a result of pharmacists being under pressure to prescribe the drugs.

According to a U.S. district judge, Walgreens distributed hundreds of thousands of pills over a 15-year period, which eventually led to the city's hospitals being overrun with opioid patients, libraries being forced to close due to syringe-clogged toilets, and syringes being left all over San Francisco's children's playgrounds.

The result, according to a Walgreens representative, is disappointing and is not supported by the facts or the law. He even claimed that the business never produced or sold opioids, nor did it provide them to the online pharmacies and pill factories that stoked the crisis. The plaintiff's ill-advised and untenable attempt to address the opioid issue through an unprecedented extension of public nuisance legislation is flawed. The company is eager for the chance to resolve these problems on appeal.

In response to the city's escalating opioid epidemic, San Francisco sued Walgreens, drug makers, and distributors in 2018. The city claimed that by flooding the city with prescription opioids, the defendants caused a public nuisance. Except for opioid manufacturers Allergan and Teva, who agreed to pay $54 million on the eve of the trial's closing arguments, all of the other defendants have previously reached settlement agreements with the city totaling $114 million. This leaves Walgreens as the only remaining defendant. Money damages were not addressed in the decision made on Wednesday; such issues will be resolved in a subsequent trial.

Over the last 20 years, the opioid crisis has been connected to more than 500,000 fatalities in the United States, including those brought on by heroin, fentanyl made illegally, and prescription opioids like OxyContin and generic oxycodone.

More than 3,000 lawsuits about the opioid crisis have been brought in state and federal courts by state and local governments, Native American tribes, unions, hospitals, and other organizations as a result of the rise in fatalities. The mayor of San Francisco proclaimed a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district last year, stating that something needed to be done about the region's high concentration of drug sellers and users.

According to the city attorney's office, between 2015 and 2020, the number of overdose deaths in San Francisco connected to opioids increased by about 500%, and on an average day, about 25% of visitors to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Emergency Department are related to opioids. According to the local health department, 257 persons died of COVID-19 in 2020, compared to 712 deaths from drug overdoses.

A significant portion of San Francisco's estimated 7,800 homeless individuals, many of whom pitch tents in the Tenderloin, struggle with serious mental illness or persistent addiction, frequently both. Some individuals complain in public while naked and in need of medical attention.

Compared to opioid producers or distributors with a wider distribution of medications, pharmacy chains have been sued less frequently. A federal jury in Ohio last year found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart irresponsibly distributed enormous supplies of painkillers in two Ohio counties in one ground-breaking case.

In May, a lawsuit alleging Walgreens inappropriately prescribed millions of opioids that fueled the opioid crisis was settled for $683 million with the state of Florida. In its arrangement with Florida, Walgreens did not acknowledge wrongdoing and agreed to compensate the state over an 18-year period.

In addition to other states, the company is being sued in Alabama, Michigan, and New Mexico. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, manages a network of around 9,000 pharmacies throughout the US. The opioid crisis has given rise to several lawsuits against Walgreens and other distributors of prescription medications.