Walgreen settles with U.S. government for $300 million in opioid prescriptions case

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Walgreens Boots Alliance has agreed to wage $300 cardinal to settee claims that it unlawfully filled millions of invalid prescriptions for opioids and different controlled substances.

In its complaint, the Justice Department, on with different national agencies, alleges that for much than a decennary pharmacists astatine the 2nd largest pharmacy concatenation successful the U.S. knowingly filled prescriptions of controlled substances, contempt wide signs of their illegitimacy. It besides claims that Walgreens pressured its workers to capable the prescriptions rapidly without respect for due ineligible protocols.

"These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and different controlled substances to travel illegally retired of Walgreens stores," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, caput of the DOJ's Civil Division successful a January statement.

Included successful those prescriptions, the authorities says, were "excessive quantities of opioids" and prescriptions for "trinity" which is simply a triple-drug combination of opioids, benzodiazepines and musculus relaxants.

The Justice Department filed its archetypal lawsuit against the nationalist drugstore concatenation connected Jan. 16, claiming that Walgreens dispensed unlawful prescriptions and past sought reimbursement for the drugs from Medicare and different national wellness attraction programs. In doing so, the bureau said Walgreens violated the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)— which regulates the organisation of regulated substances — and the False Claims Act (FCA). 

Walgreens has implicit 8,000 pharmacies crossed the United States.

"We powerfully disagree with the government's ineligible mentation and admit nary liability," a spokesperson for Walgreens told CBS MoneyWatch successful an email Monday. "Our pharmacists are dedicated wellness attraction professionals who attraction profoundly astir diligent information and proceed to play a captious relation successful providing acquisition and resources to assistance combat opioid misuse and maltreatment crossed our country."

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If Walgreens had been recovered liable, it could person been fined up to $80,850 for each medicine filled successful usurpation of the CSA, according to January connection from the Department of Justice. 

After the Walgreens colony was reached, the U.S. authorities dismissed its ailment against the institution and said that the drugstore concatenation would besides driblet a declaratory judgement enactment it filed astatine a territory tribunal successful Texas.

More than 700,000 radical successful the United States person died of opioid overdoses since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Trump has cited amerciable flows of fentanyl and migrants arsenic the main crushed down his 20% fentanyl tariff connected China and  25% tariff connected goods imported from Mexico and Canada. 

In:
• Purdue Pharma
• Opioid Epidemic
• Walgreens
• Opioids