MORGANTOWN — Two new opioid-related lawsuits target Rite Aid and Walgreens for their chink in the supply chain that contributed to a national crisis.
Between them, the suits allege the pharmacies put more than 260 million oxycodone pills into the hands of consumers between 2006-2014.
The U.S. Government also played a major role in fueling the opioid epidemic, according to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who announced the lawsuits Thursday., along with a 52-page DEA report.
The suits are filed against Rite Aid and Walgreens in Putnam County Circuit Court and allege they violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act and caused a public nuisance. Morrisey noted that Rite-Aid and Walgreens are corporately linked. Rite Aid sold its 1,651 stores to Walgreens Boot Alliance during 2017-18, including 104 stores in West Virginia.
The suits allege the two companies, in their roles as distributors, supplied more opioids to their pharmacies than was necessary to meet legitimate patient needs; and the pharmacies ordered more from other distributors.
“Acting as a wholesale distributor, Rite Aid filled suspicious orders of prescription opioids of unusual size, orders deviating substantially from a normal pattern and orders of unusual frequency from its own pharmacies,” that suit says. “Rite Aid shipped and distributed these drugs in West Virginia and failed to report or stop shipments of suspicious orders.”
This failure contributed to diversion of the drugs and allowed for abuse, the suit says. From 2006-14, Rite Aid distributed an estimated equivalent of more than 87 million, 10-milligram oxycodone pills, while its retail pharmacies ordered another 127.5 million pills from other distributors to fulfill demand.
“As vertically integrated pharmacies and distributors, Rite Aid had access to additional information that would allow it to identify and prevent diversion, unlike third-party wholesale distributors,” the suit says.
The Walgreens suit estimates that company distributed the equivalent of 29.6 million pills and its pharmacies ordered another 17.6 million during the same time period. The Walgreens suit makes similar allegations but goes into more detail about its alleged failure to monitor suspicious orders and curb diversion.
Both suits seek injunctive and monetary relief. Last year, Morrisey took action against the manufacturing end of the distribution chain, suing Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions and Mallinckrodt.
DEA report
Morrisey also announced the release of a report criticizing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for its failure to limit manufacturing of opioids to match genuine medical needs.
“The DEA was absolutely asleep at the switch,” and failed in its role of enforcing the opioid manufacturing quota system intended to sync production to medical need, Morrisey said.
According to Morrisey, that failure allowed for oversupply and diversion. DEA incompetently took the industry’s word and allowed it to produce as much as it wanted without verifying the true medical demand, he said.
The report is based on information Morrisey’s office obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed with the DEA in 2015 and 2017. The information covers the time period of 2010-2016.
Morrisey said during his press briefing that diversion was a significant driver of the overdose epidemic.
Consider, he said:
— that heroin overdoses actually lagged behind prescription opioid overdoses
— that three-fourths of heroin users got hooked via prescription opioids
— and that 70% of the opioids used were obtained through diversion, not prescriptions.
Morrisey said his office sued the DEA in 2017, which led to improvements in how it operates. He also worked with former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and current AG William Barr to implement reforms and cut quotas.
The report suggests further improvements: DEA should demand higher standards of data from drug manufacturers; improve its data collection and better maintain internal data sets; aggressively review past years’ quotas to quantify how much they exceeded actual consumption and need; and develop a concrete, data-driven methodology of accounting for diversion.
“We have to make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated,” he said Thursday.
Morrisey said his office is working with other local and state governments to develop a national abatement plan. The plan will be key to securing a fair share of federal dollars for the state. A plan must include treatment, prevention, education and enforcement components.
Tweet @dbeardtdp
