ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Trial opened Monday in Florida’s opioid epidemic lawsuit towards the Walgreens pharmacy chain, which state officers accuse of prioritizing earnings over well being through improperly doling out hundreds of thousands of robust painkillers that brought about tens of hundreds of deaths.
The trial, in Pasco County north of Tampa, comes after different defendants within the Florida lawsuit together with the CVS drug retailer chain settled for an estimated $870 million. The state may search equivalent large damages from Walgreens within the jury trial anticipated to final a couple of weeks.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma has a tentative national deal that comes with $6 billion in money from participants of the Sackler circle of relatives who personal the corporate. In all, settlements, civil and prison consequences across the nation since 2007 have totaled over $45 billion, in keeping with an Related Press tally.
In Florida, the state’s case hinges on accusations that as Walgreens allotted greater than 4.3 billion overall opioid tablets in Florida from Would possibly 2006 to June 2021, greater than part contained a number of simply identified purple flags for abuse, fraud and habit that the corporate must have spotted and acted upon.
“The proof will display Walgreens knowingly profited from the opioid disaster,” mentioned lawyer Jim Webster for the state in a gap observation, which used to be attended through Florida Lawyer Common Ashley Moody. “Walgreens wasn’t simply grasping. It used to be fueling the opioid disaster that used to be killing other people.”
Walgreens is primarily based in Deerfield, Illinois, and operates greater than 9,000 shops in all 50 states, in keeping with the corporate site. About 820 of the ones places are in Florida.
Walgreens lawyer Steve Derringer instructed jurors they must focal point on how producers akin to Purdue Pharma misled pharmacies on opioid addictive homes. He additionally famous that Florida did little because the opioid epidemic arose, specifically the predatory “tablet turbines” that proliferated within the state sooner than a crackdown in the end ended them.
“Walgreens had not anything to do with any of that,” Derringer mentioned in his opening observation. “They (drug makers) brought about this epidemic through misrepresenting the dangers and advantages to pharmacies.”
The opioid epidemic has been related to greater than 500,000 deaths within the U.S. over the last 20 years, counting the ones from prescription painkillers akin to OxyContin and generic oxycodone in addition to illicit medicine akin to heroin and illegally produced fentanyl.
In Florida, Webster mentioned, greater than 39,000 Floridians died from opioid abuse or connected issues between 1999 and 2020. Walgreens, he mentioned, bought about one among each and every 4 opioids within the state over a equivalent time span steadily below questionable cases, akin to a shady physician, faux prescriptions or massive quantities of substances clearly some distance in way over what used to be important for a given affected person.
“Walgreens used to be the final defensive position,” Webster mentioned. “Walgreens failed its responsibility to analyze suspicious prescriptions.”
Florida has spent some $14 billion during the last twenty years for a couple of opioid-related prices, starting from prison justice to drug rehabilitation for addicts to remedy for opioid-addicted babies, Webster mentioned. The state will search billions of bucks in damages within the Walgreens case.
In the similar case, Moody mentioned CVS Well being Corp. and CVS Pharmacy Inc. can pay the state $484 million. Teva Prescription drugs Industries Ltd. agreed to pay $195 million and Allergan PLC greater than $134 million.
Florida has up to now got hundreds of thousands of bucks in opioid settlements involving McKesson Corp., Cardinal Well being Inc., Johnson & Johnson Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp.