The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a civil lawsuit against a major drug distributor, AmerisourceBergen, for allegedly contributing to the nation’s opioid crises by failing to alert authorities about suspicious pharmacy prescriptions.
Justice authorities have sought civil penalties and injunctive relief alleging that this illegal conduct resulted in «at least hundreds of thousands of violations» of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), according to a press release issued by Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta.
In this regard, the alleged unlawful conduct would include placing and failing to report numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely to facilitate the diversion of prescription opioids, thereby exacerbating the addiction crises in the United States.
According to the DOJ, the company sold «billions of prescription units» over the past ten years.
«Our complaint alleges that the company’s repeated and systematic failure to comply with this simple obligation (reporting extraneous orders) helped trigger an opioid epidemic that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade,» said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Director Anne Milgram.
The government’s complaint has thus stated that the company «flouted its legal obligations» and «and prioritized profits over the well-being of Americans.»
«The allegations against AmerisourceBergen are troubling, especially for a company headquartered just a few miles from Philadelphia neighborhoods devastated by the opioid epidemic,» said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Jacqueline C. Romero.
Opioids, drugs that are prescribed for pain relief, carry a serious risk of addiction and are responsible for numerous overdose deaths in the United States due to prescription or illicit trafficking.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
