US sues Walmart for irresponsible handling of opioid orders, wrong prescriptions

The US Justice Department sued Walmart over its role in the opioid crisis, alleging irresponsible handling of orders, wrongly filling thousands of prescriptions, and ignoring warning signs about problem orders to boost sales.

Up to billions of dollars in penalties could be sought in the litigation that followed a multi-year investigation.

According to Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting head of the Justice Department's civil division, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids but instead did the opposite by filling thousands of invalid prescriptions and failing to report suspicious opioid orders.

The government lawsuit said Walmart managers enormously pressured pharmacists to fill prescriptions and that it withheld the information from pharmacists on data on invalid controlled-substance prescriptions.

Walmart claimed the charges were baseless and accused US authorities of shifting blame from the Drug Enforcement Administration's failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids. It added that the complaint was "riddled with factual inaccuracies."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 450,000 Americans died between 1999 and 2018 from overdoses due to prescription and illegal opioids.