DOJ Sues Walgreens for Filling ‘Illegal’ Opioid Prescriptions

The Department of Justice (DOJ) this week sued the drugstore chain Walgreens for filling “illegal” opioid prescriptions that had no “legitimate” medical purpose for more than a decade.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions despite “red flags” that they might be illegal and pressured its pharmacists to fill the prescriptions. While not taking the necessary time to “validate them”.

“Walgreens allegedly ignored substantial evidence from multiple sources that its stores were dispensing illegal prescriptions, including its own pharmacists and internal data,” the DOJ said in a Friday press release.

“These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally from Walgreens stores,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton added in a statement.

The government alleged that the company violated the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) by dispensing millions of illegal prescriptions. The lawsuit alleges that Walgreens, which has more than 8,000 pharmacies nationwide, also violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by seeking reimbursement for many prescriptions from various federal health care programs.

“These laws are critically important to protecting our communities from the dangers of the opioid epidemic,” said Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Maurice Pasquale. “Our office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to ensure that opioids are dispensed properly and that taxpayer funds are spent only on legitimate pharmacy claims.”

The DOJ said four different whistleblowers, who worked at Walgreens, filed whistleblower actions. Walgreens said it would stand behind its pharmacists and asked the court to protect the drugstore corporation from DOJ efforts to enforce “arbitrary regulations.”

“We are asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and protect against attempts by the government to enforce arbitrary ‘rules’ that do not appear in any law or regulation and have not gone through any official rulemaking process,” Walgreens said Friday. .

“We will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with ‘rules’ that simply do not exist,” the company said, adding that it “looks forward to protecting the professionalism and integrity” of our pharmacists.

The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit against CVS Health last month, accusing the retailer of aiding the opioid crisis by knowingly filling illegal prescriptions in an effort to “reward profit over patient safety.”