Walmart Sued By DOJ Over Opioid Crisis

Walmart Sued By DOJ Over Opioid Crisis

Introduction

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued Walmart over the illegal distribution of opioids that has fueled the opioid crisis throughout the nation.

The federal government filed a lawsuit against the retail giant, claiming that the company forced the pharmacists to fill the opioid prescriptions. The lawsuit even claims that Walmart failed to detect and report distrustful prescriptions to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Jason Dunn, the U.S. attorney for Colorado, informed that Walmart was aware of the inefficient system used by its distribution center, which failed to detect and report suspicious orders.

Opioids are a class of drugs that act on the nerve cells in the body and brain to relieve pain. There are different types of opioids like Buprenorphine, Butorphanol, Codeine, Fentanyl, Oxycodone. Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone, and Hydromorphone are opioids that are not commonly used.

Walmart is the biggest opioid distributor with over 5,000 pharmacies in its stores around the country. It is precisely positioned to prevent the illegal distribution of opioids, yet it failed in the process, resulting in a nationwide opioids rampage.

Walmart rejected all the allegations by saying that the federal claims are inaccurate and doctors should be blamed for giving the wrong prescriptions. The spokesperson for Walmart informed that the company always allowed the pharmacists to deny the uncertain opioids prescriptions, and the pharmacists have even denied filling hundreds of thousands of such prescriptions. The company has blocked many doctors from filling their opioid prescriptions at Walmart's pharmacies and also forwarded many investigative leads to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Earlier in October, Walmart filed a preemptive suit against the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The lawsuit stated that the investigation launched in 2016 by the Justice Department identified many doctors who wrote problematic prescriptions, but nearly 70% of these doctors were still actively registered with DEA.

The company has urged the federal judge to overrule the government from seeking civil damages. It even claimed that the government's inefficiency is the main cause of the opioid crisis of the country.