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One of the largest pharmaceutical distributors in the nation will pay $150 million and halt sales at distribution centers in four states for turning a “blind eye” to suspicious orders of prescription painkillers that are at the core of the nationwide opioid abuse epidemic, authorities said.
Over a five-year period beginning in 2008, California-based McKesson Corp. supplied various pharmacies with “an increasing amount of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, frequently misused products that are part of the current opioid epidemic,” New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement Tuesday.
That supply, Fishman said, contributed to the epidemic that “is carving an increasingly destructive path through our country.”
Fishman said that the company was given a chance nearly a decade ago to implement a more “robust” system, but “instead chose to ignore its own compliance” in favor of “a bigger bottom-line.”
A statement on the company’s website said McKesson is committed to working with the Drug Enforcement Administration “on an ongoing basis to identify new ways to prevent misuse of controlled substances.”
“Pharmaceutical distributors play an important role in identifying and combating prescription drug diversion and abuse. McKesson, as one of the nation’s largest distributors, takes our role seriously. We continue to significantly enhance the procedures and safeguards across our distribution network to help curtail prescription drug diversion while ensuring patient access to needed medications,” John H. Hammergren, chairman and chief executive officer, McKesson, said in the prepared statement.
“We are committed to tackling this multi-faceted problem in collaboration with all parties in the supply chain that share the responsibility for the distribution of opioid medications,” Hammergren concluded.
Tuesday’s settlement came nine years after the company had already agreed to pay a $13.25 million settlement for similar violations of not designing or implementing an effective system to detect and report suspicious orders for painkillers the company distributed to independent and small-chain pharmacies.
For example in Colorado, McKesson processed more than 1.6 million orders for prescription drugs, but only reported 16 of those orders as suspicious, authorities said.
“Pharmaceutical companies are our first line of defense in the fight against prescription opioid abuse,” said Carl J. Kotowski, special agent-in-charge for the DEA. “If they turn a blind eye to suspicious orders of pharmaceutical controlled substances they are contributing to this epidemic.”
The company will be barred from selling pharmaceuticals at its distribution centers in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan and Florida for “multiple years,” authorities said. The company has also agreed to staffing and organizational improvements, periodic auditing over the next five years and financial penalties.
Authorities said the agreement came after a multi-district investigation that involved DEA Field Divisions in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Miami, Newark, San Francisco, St. Louis, and the Washington District Office.
The agreement mandates a first-ever monitoring in a controlled substances case and contains some of the “most severe sanctions ever agreed to” by a pharmaceutical distributor.
“This settlement sends a clear message that even corporations need to do their part to fight this devastating opioid epidemic,” Kotowski said.