Oxycodone drug. An Ohio grand jury on Tuesday found major Pharmaceutical chains responsible for abetting the opioid crisis.
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Marie Hickman / Getty Images
Oxycodone drug. An Ohio grand jury on Tuesday found major Pharmaceutical chains responsible for abetting the opioid crisis.
Marie Hickman / Getty Images
A federal grand jury on Tuesday found three of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, to be liable for helping fuel the United States’ opioid crisis.
The jury concluded that pharmacies contributed to a so-called public nuisance in Lake and Trumbull counties in Ohio by selling and dispensing large quantities of prescription pain medication.
Some of those drugs are initially purchased legally and then sold on the black market.
Tuesday’s ruling is expected to resonate nationally, as the three chains face thousands of similar lawsuits filed by US communities grappling with the opioid crisis.
A separate legal process will now take place to determine how much companies will have to pay to help tackle the crisis, with damages likely to run into the billions of dollars.
In a statement, the attorneys for the Ohio counties that filed the federal lawsuit describe the grand jury’s decision as a “major victory” in an effort to hold the companies accountable for the crisis. Addiction has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
“For decades, pharmacy chains have watched as pills flowing out their doors cause harm and fail to take action as required by federal law,” the attorneys said.
Drugstore chain executives have long asserted that they did nothing wrong and dispensed drugs only after licensed healthcare providers had prescribed them.
In a statement sent to NPR, a spokesperson for CVS promised to appeal. “We strongly disagree with this decision,” the statement read. “Legal prescription pharmacists are written by DEA-licensed physicians to prescribe legal, FDA-approved substances to treat patients who really need them.”
In a separate statement to NPR from Walgreens, a spokesman described the ruling as disappointing. “The facts and the law do not support the verdict. We believe the trial court made significant legal errors in letting the case go before a jury,” it said.
The federal ruling comes at a time when efforts by state courts to hold corporations accountable for the opioid crisis face major legal hurdles.
Earlier this month, the Oklahoma state supreme court overturned a judgment against drug maker Johnson & Johnson worth about $460 million based on the same legal argument “disturbing the community”.
A state judge in California also declined to hold drug companies accountable for any role in fueling the opioid crisis in communities in that state.
Opioid lawsuits continue to be filed in other locations across the United States, including New York and Washington state.
