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The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn] –
According to the Tennessee Attorney General’s office, Walgreens pharmacies have ignored warnings about alleged pill-mills and drug pushers and have continued to inundate the state with opioids.
A lawsuit was filed against the corporation, citing that they failed to comply with opioid distribution regulations in Tennessee within their more than 200 pharmacies across the state.
When pharmacies across Southwest Tennessee stopped filling prescriptions written by a McMinnville physician who was under investigation by the federal government, Walgreens instructed their pharmacists to fill them. Records show that the company also told pharmacists to continue to fill prescriptions from a Dayton doctor who gave the medications out to cash only patients from his dog filled clinic. Walgreens also allegedly knew that a Chattanooga physician was providing free prescriptions to addicts who referred 10 more addicts to his practice, but they gave instructions to continue to fill those as well.
“These are far from isolated examples,” attorneys stated in the lawsuit. “While Walgreens conducted itself in Tennessee as both retailer and (opioid) distributor, it complied with the obligations of neither…Walgreens did not flood the state of Tennessee with opioid by accident.”
Instead, the company was pushing the painkillers to turn a profit. The lawsuit alleges that Walgreen’s “utterly saturated the state of Tennessee with narcotics.”
The company’s records show that, in 14 years, their pharmacies have filled enough opiate prescriptions to give 175 pills to every child and adult in the state. The numbers given in the lawsuit come from internal records and emails dating from 2006-2020.
In Sullivan County alone, an area known to be at the heart of the state’s opioid problem, pharmacies provided enough painkillers for every resident of the county to have 226 pills. In Tullahoma, stores sold enough to supply every resident with 269 pills. In Dunlap, prescriptions totaled enough pills for citizens to have 309 pills each, and in Jamestown, enough narcotics were sold to give each resident 2,104 pills.
According to the lawsuit, Walgreens bypassed suspicion of over-dispensing the drugs by purchasing from distributors but also buying directly from drug manufacturers. This allowed them to sell more product without the numbers being as easily caught.
“Notably, Walgreens had the highest market share in the state from 2008-2012, and often by a significant margin, during what was arguably the peak of prescription opioid dispensing,” the lawsuit reads.
When pharmacies maxed out their selling limits, corporate officials provided ways for them to get around those regulations.
“Between two stores (in Middle Tennessee), over 20 million opioid pills entered the Crossville and Cookeville communities, enough for each of the combined 50,000 residents to receive approximately 500 (doses) each,” the lawsuit states. “Walgreens actually told (supervisors at its Jackson, Tenn.) stores how to manipulate Walgreens’ systems to artificially increase its ordering limits.”
The lawsuit also claims that the pharmacies were filling prescriptions for customers well outside of the state’s demographics. Customers who used Walgreens pharmacies in Tennessee were from dozens of states, including as far away as Alaska and California.
“Three stores in Hamilton County dispensed 35 million doses for patients from 4500 zip codes, including ones as far away as Seattle,” according to the litigation.
This is not Walgreens’ first round of legal issues involving opioid prescriptions. The company has already paid out billions to settle suits in other states over profiteering through opioid sales.
The company has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.
About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career. Most recently, he served as Deputy Director for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History. Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com
One Response
More Ambulance chasing lawyers and groups just looking to sue someone.