MIAMI - Federal authorities have reached an $80 million civil settlement with the Walgreens pharmacy chain over rules violations that allowed tens of thousands of units of powerful painkillers such as oxycodone to illegally wind up in the hands of drug addicts and dealers, officials said Tuesday.
Mark R. Trouville, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami field office, said Walgreens committed numerous record-keeping and dispensing violations of the Controlled Substances Act at a major East Coast distribution centre in Jupiter, Fla., and at six retail pharmacies around the state. The drugs also included hydrocodone and Xanax.
Authorities said the Jupiter centre failed to flag suspicious orders of drugs it received from pharmacies, and the retail outlets routinely filled prescriptions that clearly were not for a legitimate medical use. The upshot was many more doses of prescription drugs were available illegally on the street.
Trouville called Walgreens' actions "a clear example of inexcusable corporate conduct that existed only for greed and profit. National pharmaceutical chains are not exempt from following the law."
Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens has more than 8,000 stores nationwide and had sales in 2012 of $72 billion, according to the company's website.
"As the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S., we are fully committed to doing our part to prevent prescription drug abuse," said Kermit Crawford, president of pharmacy, health and wellness at Walgreens. "We have worked closely with the DEA over the past several months to reach this agreement."
continue reading here