CVS, Walgreens and Walmart were ordered Wednesday to pay two Ohio counties a total of $650 million due to their role in the ongoing national opioid epidemic. New legal action related to the crisis has also occurred this month in California and Minnesota.
According to Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster said in his opinion this week that the three pharmacies recklessly dispensed prescription painkillers and that their actions led to overdoses, addictions and an overwhelmed community resource network.
A jury previously ruled that the companies should be held liable for their role in the epidemic during a “weeklong trial” last fall. In May, Polster also held a five-day hearing in which experts testified about the monetary cost of the epidemic for impacted Ohio communities.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pharmaceutical companies claimed in the 1990s that opioid pain relievers would not lead to addiction. With this faulty information, health care providers began to increase prescription of opioid medications, leading to misuse and addiction issues.
“In 2017 HHS declared a public health emergency and announced a 5-Point Strategy To Combat the Opioid Crisis,” said the department.
As of this year, “the nation’s drug overdose epidemic continues to change and become worse,” according to the American Medical Association. “The epidemic affects every state and now is driven by illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, methamphetamine, and cocaine, often in combination or in adulterated forms.”
According to the AMA, more than 107,000 deaths related to opioids were reported in the U.S. between December 2020 to December 2021.
Last year’s trial and Polster’s order this week are expected to indicate the outcome of similar cases.
“No federal judge in history has had to determine the scope and cost of measures necessary to address a small piece of a terrible and tenacious and escalating national tragedy,” said Polster.
More than 3,000 cities and counties have sued pharmaceutical companies for contributing to the opioid epidemic, according to The Plain Dealer.
Last week, a federal judge has ruled that Walgreens can be held liable for its role in San Francisco’s opioid crisis, Audacy station KCBS Radio reported.
Senior District Judge Charles Breyer wrote in a decision that Walgreens “substantially contributed” to the city’s opioid epidemic by failing to meet its “regulatory obligations to take reasonable steps to prevent the drugs from being diverted and harming the public.”
In 2019, San Francisco estimated that nearly 5% of residents were experiencing opioid addiction.
In an emailed statement to KCBS Radio, a Walgreens spokesperson said the company was “disappointed with this outcome” and will appeal. The spokesperson added that Walgreens “never manufactured or marketed opioids, nor did we distribute them to the 'pill mills' and internet pharmacies that fueled this crisis.”
Regarding the Ohio case, Michael DeAngelis, a spokesman for CVS, said the company “strongly disagrees” with the court’s ruling and the jury’s findings that the company oversupplied opioids, said The Plain Dealer.
Walmart and Walgreens also made similar statements after the ruling this week.
While Ohio’s Lake and Trumbull counties sought $875 million to $1 billion, the amount the $650 million the companies were ordered to pay is more than what company attorneys recommended, which was somewhere between $4.2 million and $12 million.
In Minnesota, Attorney General Keith Ellison and 36 other attorney generals Wednesday announced a $450 million nationwide agreement with Ireland-based opioid maker Endo.
This settlement comes as part of Endo’s bankruptcy proceedings and it is expected to “provide cash to address opioid crisis, ban promotion of Endo’s opioids (including Percocet), and require significant document disclosure,” for publication in a public archive, said a press release from Ellison. In principle, the proposal could provide Minnesota with millions for opioid treatment, remediation, and prevention efforts.
Preliminary data from the Minnesota Department of Health shows that from 2020 to 2021, opioid-involved overdose deaths increased by 35%.
“Attorney General Ellison and the coalition allege that Endo falsely promoted the benefits of Opana ER’s so-called abuse-deterrent formulation, which did nothing to deter oral abuse and led to deadly outbreaks of hepatitis and HIV due to its widespread abuse via injection,” said the press release.
Apart from the settlement with Endo, Attorney General Ellison’s office has reached eight other settlements in the last two and a half years.
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