The Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against Pennsylvania-based drug distributor AmerisourceBergen over its alleged role in the opioid crisis.
The company is accused of purposefully ignoring warnings about the danger of opioids and ignoring legal reporting requirements, racking up hundreds of thousands of violations over the past decade, the Financial Times reported.
The distributor put “profits over the well-being of Americans” as it sold billions of opiates — often to customers who shouldn’t have had access to them, the complaint claims.
“Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement obtained by NPR. “AmerisourceBergen which sold billions of units of prescription opioids over the past decade repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement.”
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“The company’s repeated and systemic failure to fulfill this simple [reporting] obligation helped ignite an opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade,” Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram said.
The complaint alleges that in locations in Florida and West Virginia, AmerisourceBergen “knew that opioids they distributed were likely being sold in pharmacies’ parking lots for cash but they continued to supply those pharmacies with huge amounts of opioids anyway.”
In one case, an employee identified two “problematic” customers and notified higher-ups, but they were supplied anyway. The two died of drug overdoses shortly after.
In a statement posted on its website, AmerisourceBergen denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the lawsuit “cherry picked” examples and was an attempt to shift blame away from the government.
“An objective review of the facts shows that the DOJ’s complaint about AmerisourceBergen is simply an attempt to shift blame from past administrations at the Department of Justice and specifically their agency, the DEA, to industries they were tasked with regulating. Congress investigated the DEA’s conduct and found that they did not use tools like registration and manufacturing quotas to address opioid abuse and misuse,” the statement said.
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Pharmaceutical and distribution companies have had to pay $50 billion in settlements over their roles in the opioid crisis, which has killed more than 1 million people in the United States — including about 107,000 in the last year, according to NPR.
AmerisourceBergen itself agreed to pay $6.1 billion in February over its role in the crisis. If found guilty in the latest suit, several billion dollars could be added to that total.
