Walgreens contributed to San Francisco opioid crisis, judge rules

San Francisco – A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Walgreens can be held responsible for contributing to San Francisco opioid crisis for over-dispensing highly addictive drugs for years without proper supervision and failing to identify and report suspicious orders as required by law.

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said the pharmacy chain “continuously violated what they were required to do under the federal Controlled Substances Act,” failed to track opioid prescriptions, prevent pharmacists from examining prescriptions and not seeing “the many red flags from doctors and others.” that they were overprescribing.”

“Pharmacists were pressured to fill, fill, fill,” he said, “and as a result, Walgreens filled our streets with opioids.”

“This decision gives voice to the thousands of lives lost to the opioid epidemic,” Chiu said in a prepared statement. quoted by CBS News Bay Area. “This crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was created by the opioid industry, and local jurisdictions like San Francisco have had to shoulder the burden for far too long. We’re grateful that the Court heard our arguments and held us accountable at Walgreens of the damage. they caused.”

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote in his decision that from 2006 to 2020, “Walgreens pharmacies in San Francisco dispensed hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for red-flag opioids without performing adequate due diligence. “Tens of thousands of these prescriptions were written by doctors with suspicious prescribing patterns. The evidence showed that Walgreens did not provide its pharmacists with sufficient time, staff or resources to conduct due diligence on these prescriptions.”

He said the high volume of illegitimate opioid prescriptions contributed to the city’s hospitals being overwhelmed with opioid patients, libraries being forced to close due to toilets clogged with syringes and syringes getting dirty the playgrounds of San Francisco.

Reaction from Walgreens

A Walgreens spokesman said the chain is disappointed by the outcome, which it said is not supported by the facts and the law. The network told CBS News Bay Area that it plans to appeal the decision.

“As we have said throughout this process, we never manufactured or marketed opioids, nor did we distribute them to the ‘pill mills’ and Internet pharmacies that fueled this crisis,” spokesman Fraser Engerman said in a communicated “Plaintiff’s attempt to solve the opioid crisis with an unprecedented expansion of public nuisance law is misguided and unsustainable. We look forward to the opportunity to address these issues on appeal.”

In 2018, San Francisco sued Walgreens and drug manufacturers and distributors for worsening the city’s opioid epidemic, saying they created a “public nuisance” by flooding the city with prescription opioids. All other defendants previously settled with the city for a total of $114 million, including $54 million that opioid makers Allergan and Teva agreed to pay on the eve of closing arguments at trial, leaving Walgreens as sole defendant

Wednesday’s ruling did not include a decision on monetary damages, which will be determined at a future trial.

Opioid toll

The opioid epidemic has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the United States over the past two decades, including prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and generic oxycodone, as well as illicit drugs such as heroin and manufactured fentanyl illegally

The surge in deaths has prompted more than 3,000 lawsuits filed by state and local governments, Native American tribes, labor unions, hospitals and other entities in state and federal courts over the number of opioids.

In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin neighborhood last year, saying something had to be done about the high concentration of drug dealers and people using drugs in public.

The city attorney’s office says San Francisco saw a nearly 500 percent increase in opioid-related overdose deaths between 2015 and 2020, and that on a typical day, about a quarter of visits to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s emergency rooms are related to opioids.

In 2020, 712 people died of drug overdoses, compared to 257 people who died of COVID-19, according to the city’s health department.

A high percentage of the roughly 7,800 homeless people in San Francisco, many of whom pitch tents in the Tenderloin, are struggling with chronic addiction or serious mental illness, often both. Some people strip in the street, naked and need medical help.

Chain pharmacies have been sued less often than opioid manufacturers or wholesalers who distribute pharmaceuticals more widely. In a groundbreaking case, a federal jury in Ohio last year found that CVS, Walgreens and Walmart recklessly distributed massive amounts of pain pills to two Ohio counties.

In May, Walgreens reached a $683 million settlement with the state of Florida in a lawsuit accusing the company of improperly dispensing millions of painkillers that contributed to the opioid crisis. Walgreens admitted no wrongdoing in its settlement with Florida and will make payments to the state for 18 years.

The company also faces litigation in Alabama, Michigan and New Mexico, among other states.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., based in Deerfield, Illinois, operates a network of about 9,000 pharmacies in the United States. Walgreens and other prescription drug distributors have faced a number of lawsuits over the opioid crisis.

In:
• Opioid epidemic
• San Francisco