Tennessee sues Walgreens over opioid prescription onslaught

Tennessee’s legal professional basic stated Wednesday he has sued Walgreens, accusing the pharmacy chain of contributing to the state’s opioid disaster by failing to take care of efficient controls in opposition to the abuse of prescription ache drugs.

The lawsuit searching for unspecified civil penalties was filed in Knox County Circuit Courtroom by Legal professional Common Herbert H. Slatery III and alleges violations of Tennessee’s Shopper Safety Act.

The lawsuit stated that between 2006 and 2020, Walgreens retail shops in Tennessee allotted greater than 1.1 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone drugs. One pharmacy alone in Jamestown allotted sufficient opioids over that interval to provide every resident with 2,104 drugs.

“Walgreens didn’t flood the State of Tennessee with opioids by chance,” Slatery stated in a press release. “Relatively, the gas that Walgreens added to the fireplace of the opioid epidemic was the results of understanding — or willfully ignorant — company selections. Walgreens ignored quite a few purple flags and didn’t detect and stop the abuse and diversion of harmful narcotics.”

In a press release Wednesday night time, Walgreens stated it “by no means manufactured or marketed opioids, nor did we distribute them to the ache clinics and ‘tablet mills’ that fueled this disaster.

“We’ll proceed to defend in opposition to the unjustified assaults on the professionalism of our pharmacists, devoted healthcare professionals who stay within the communities they serve.”

The go well with stated Walgreens created a public nuisance and for years didn’t carry out due diligence or prepare its pharmacists on the right way to acknowledge suspicious exercise for opioid abuse and diversion. The go well with stated Tennessee Walgreens pharmacies allotted opioids to sufferers from not less than 31 totally different states.

From June 2013 to March 2014, Walgreens pharmacies in Tennessee allotted 103,000 drugs prescribed by an obstetrician in Germantown. Practically 20% of these have been for out-of-state sufferers, the go well with stated.

Walgreens crammed quite a few opioid prescriptions for youngsters as younger as 2. A dentist in Erin wrote such a prescription that was 2.5 instances the advisable most day by day dose of opioids for an grownup, the lawsuit stated.

The opioid dependancy and overdose epidemic has been linked to greater than 500,000 deaths within the U.S. during the last twenty years.

State and native governments, Native American tribes, unions, hospitals and different entities have filed greater than 3,000 lawsuits involving the opioid epidemic in state and federal courts.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson finalized a $5 billion nationwide settlement earlier this 12 months. Nationwide drug distribution corporations AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Well being and McKesson finalized one value $21 billion. OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is making an attempt to influence a court docket to let it transfer forward with a deal that would embody as much as $6 billion from members of the Sackler household.