(Gray News) – Walmart is paying $50 million to settle claims that its pharmacies played a role in the country’s opioid epidemic.
In 2020, government attorneys alleged that since June 2013, Walmart had filled illegal prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances. They also claimed Walmart didn’t detect suspicious orders and contact the Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to the Justice Department, members of Walmart’s compliance team knew that certain people prescribing the opioids were considered “pill mills” but filled the prescriptions anyway.
Shoppers enter a Walmart store, Monday, Jan. 2, 2023, in Hallandale Beach, Fla.(Wilfredo Lee | AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
The Justice Department said that when some Walmart pharmacists noted the questionable prescriptions to the compliance team, they were ignored.
“As one director on the compliance team acknowledged in an email, rather than analyzing the refusal-to-fill reports, the compliance team viewed ‘[d]riving sales and patient awareness,’ as ‘a far better use of our Market Directors and Market manger’s time,’” the Justice Department said in a statement.
The Justice Department also alleged that some Walmart pharmacists filled the prescriptions even though they knew the prescriptions were invalid.
Along with the $50 million settlement, the Justice Department said it reached a “memorandum of agreement” with the Drug Enforcement Administration to address its future obligations in dispensing controlled substances.” Through the agreement, a hotline will be established where employees and patients can report suspicious illegal prescriptions. The prescription dispensing patterns of the pharmacies will also be monitored, and a process will be established to evaluate prescribers.
“Today’s settlement proves this Department is committed to putting Americans’ flourishing first,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said.
A spokeswoman for Walmart said the company is happy that the case is being resolved.
Between 1999 and 2023, more than 800,000 people died as a result of an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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