Insta
Walmart Store (Representative image) (Wikipedia/Walmart)
The US Justice Department has sued Walmart, accusing the retail behemoth of allegedly fueling the opioid crisis in the country.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday (22 December), prosecutors from the Justice Department said "Walmart's pharmacies violated the law by filling thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances that Walmart's pharmacists knew were invalid".
The Justice Department is seeking civil penalties that could run into the billions of dollars.
The suit alleged that Walmart "knowingly violated well established rules requiring it to scrutinise controlled-substance prescriptions to ensure that they were valid" and required "pharmacists to process a high volume of prescriptions as fast as possible," reports NBC News.
Walmart said in a statement that the company has "always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill problematic opioids prescriptions" and refused to fill "hundreds of thousands" of suspicious prescriptions.
Walmart said it sent "tens of thousands of investigative leads" to the Drug Enforcement Administration about suspicious doctors.
The company said it also "blocked thousands of questionable doctors" from filling their prescriptions through Walmart pharmacies.
The federal complaint, however, said that "Walmart profited by providing its pharmacies with unusually large quantities of controlled substances to sell, and from selling other products to customers who came to Walmart stores only because Walmart pharmacies would readily provide these controlled substances".
Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies at its stores in the US.
Deaths due to synthetic opioid overdoses in the US reached more than 81,000 from May 2019 to May this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
Walmart said in October that it had been threatened with such a lawsuit.
At the time, Walmart said the US was imposing "unworkable requirements that are not found in any law".
Roughly 450,000 people have died from overdoses related to prescription painkillers and illegal drugs since 1999, reports the BBC.
(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
Support Swarajya's 50 Ground Reports Project & Sponsor A Story
Every general election Swarajya does a 50 ground reports project.
Aimed only at serious readers and those who appreciate the nuances of political undercurrents, the project provides a sense of India's electoral landscape. As you know, these reports are produced after considerable investment of travel, time and effort on the ground.
This time too we've kicked off the project in style and have covered over 30 constituencies already. If you're someone who appreciates such work and have enjoyed our coverage please consider sponsoring a ground report for just Rs 2999 to Rs 19,999 - it goes a long way in helping us produce more quality reportage.
You can also back this project by becoming a subscriber for as little as Rs 999 - so do click on this links and choose a plan that suits you and back us.
Click below to contribute.
Latest