Walmart, CVS, Walgreens To Pay $650M Over Opioid Crisis

Walmart, CVS, Walgreens To Pay $650M Over Opioid Crisis

Introduction

After a jury held the owners of CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart pharmacies responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic, a federal judge in Ohio ordered them to pay two Ohio counties $650 million over 15 years.

After a six-week trial, the jury returned its verdict in November of last year in a case that other attorneys had been closely watching. It was the first verdict in a case involving pharmacy chains accused of contributing to the opioid problem.

A second nonjury trial was held to determine the appropriate amount the firms must pay, and the results were used to determine the decision that the U.S. judge in Cleveland imposed on Wednesday.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Lake and Trumbull counties, were responsible for some of the methods designed for them to address concerns related to the opioid epidemic, the judge ruled. He told the companies to put the equivalent of two years' worth of those payments, or $86.7 million ($650.6 million total), into a fund right away. The corporations want to appeal the ruling.

The executive director for corporate communications at CVS Health Corp. claims that the company strenuously disagrees with both the Court's decision regarding the counties' abatement plan and the underlying judgment from last autumn. Pharmacists fill the prescriptions of DEA-licensed doctors who dole out lawful, FDA-approved medications to help real patients in need.

According to a representative for Walgreen Co., neither the jury's verdict from last fall's trial nor the court's ruling were supported by the facts or the law. He even claimed that throughout the entire process, the company never produced, advertised, or provided opioids to "pill mills" or online pharmacies that contributed to the opioid crisis. The parent business of Walgreen Co., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., runs pharmacies both domestically and abroad.

In their complaint, the attorneys representing Lake and Trumbull counties contended that the pharmacies had failed to prevent the overabundance of painkillers and the filling of fake prescriptions in the northeastern Ohio counties. Government statistics show that from 2006 to 2012, approximately 80 million opioid pills were transported to Trumbull County, which has a population under 200,000. Over that time, more than 60 million opioid pills were delivered to Lake County, which has a population of about 230,000.

The counties claimed that the drugstore firms' complicity in the opioid crisis had turned it into a public nuisance that had cost each county nearly $1 billion in legal, social service, and court costs.

A federal judge in San Francisco concluded last week that Walgreen Co. contributed to the city's drug problem. According to the U.S. district judge, San Francisco's largest retail drugstore, Walgreens, was unable to appropriately stop suspicious orders of opioids that might be used unlawfully for more than ten years. He determined that the business was responsible for "significantly contributing to the public nuisance" that is San Francisco's opioid problem.

States announced a $26 billion settlement with drug manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and distributors McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen Corp., and Cardinal Health Inc. in July 2021 to end thousands of cases relating to the opioid crisis. According to them, cities and counties would utilise the monies to support social programmes that address the negative effects of opioid addiction as well as to pay first responders.