In an aerial view, a customer enters a Walgreens store on January 4, 2024 in San Pablo, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The Justice Department announced Friday that it had sued the pharmacy giant. Walgreens for allegedly dispensing millions of illegal prescriptions.
The DOJ said Walgreens, from August 2012 to the present, “knowingly” filled these prescriptions, which “did not have a legitimate medical purpose, were invalid, and/or were not dispensed within the usual framework of professional practice.
“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years it failed to meet its obligations to distribute dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Principal Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the civil division of the Department of Justice.
Boynton said Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with “clear red flags that the prescriptions were most likely illegal.”
The company “systematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions, including prescriptions for controlled substances, without taking the necessary time to confirm their validity,” Boynton said. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to move illegally out of Walgreens stores.”
Some Walgreens patients have died from drug overdoses shortly after obtaining invalid prescriptions at Walgreens, the DOJ alleges.
The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
Walgreens said in a statement: “We ask the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and protect them from the government’s attempt to enforce arbitrary ‘rules’ that do not appear in any law or regulation and which do not have never been subject to a formal rule-making process. “.
“We will not stand idly by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with ‘rules’ that simply don’t exist,” Walgreens said.
“Walgreens supports our pharmacists, dedicated healthcare professionals who live in the communities they serve, filling legitimate prescriptions for FDA-approved medications written by DEA-licensed prescribers, in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations .”
The suit alleges that although Walgreens issued written policies reflecting its understanding of the legal obligations, the company took other actions that it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying.
“Walgreens prioritized profits over safety and compliance by implementing policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions promptly and left them without sufficient time or resources to exercise responsibility corresponding,” the suit states.
“One of these measures was “Verify By Promise Time” (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription within 15 minutes for a “waiter” (a customer waiting for the prescription in the pharmacy ),” the suit claims.
“Walgreens also tracked pharmacists who dispensed low levels of controlled substances through its ‘Non-Dispensing Pharmacist Report,’” the suit states.
“Walgreens created this measure in part because it believed that pharmacists who refused to fill prescriptions for controlled substances were compromising Walgreens’ customer service.”
