Kentucky Sues CVS Health, Accusing Chain of ‘Fueling’ the State’s Opioid Crisis

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Kentucky’s attorney general last week sued CVS Health, accusing its pharmacy chain of flooding the state with prescription opioids that contributed to the state’s addiction woes.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron filed the lawsuit in Franklin County Circuit Court in Kentucky’s capital city. Cameron says the health care company played a role in “fueling the crisis” by inundating the state with millions of doses of powerful prescription painkillers. The state is seeking civil penalties and punitive damages in the suit.

“As both distributor and pharmacy, CVS was in a unique position to monitor and stop the peddling of these highly-addictive drugs from their stores, yet they ignored their own safeguard systems,” Cameron said in a news release.

It’s the state’s latest legal action against companies it blames for supplying a massive pipeline of prescription pills into Kentucky. In 2015, drug overdoses accounted for about 60% of Kentucky’s statewide accidental deaths, Cameron said. The Republican attorney general is pressing lawsuits against several opioid manufacturers and distributors. Many of those suits were filed by Cameron’s predecessor, Democrat Andy Beshear, who is now Kentucky’s governor.

CVS Health, which operates one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains, said it’s prepared to defend itself against the state’s allegations.

“Opioids are made and marketed by drug manufacturers, not pharmacies,” the company said. “Pharmacists dispense opioid prescriptions written by licensed physicians for a legitimate medical need. Pharmacists do not _ and cannot _ write prescriptions. Nor do they _ or can they _ examine patients, conduct tests, diagnose medical conditions or determine medical treatment. That is the role of physicians, who have the responsibility to write appropriate prescriptions.”

The new Kentucky lawsuit says CVS Health used unlawful business practices and failed to guard against the diversion of the powerful opioids.

To highlight the massive supply, Cameron said one CVS store in Perry County purchased more than 6.8 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from 2006 to 2014 — enough opioids for each resident of the Appalachian county to have more than 26 pills every year during the same period. In western Kentucky, a CVS store in Crittenden County bought more than 2.8 million dosage units of the drugs, enough to supply everyone in the county with at least 34 pills every year, he said.

Since CVS had a dual role in the opioid supply chain as a distributor and pharmacy, the lawsuit says the company’s compliance with the law “was vital to safeguard consumers and control the rate of addiction, abuse and diversion of opioids.”

Despite supplying “staggering quantities” of opioids in Kentucky, CVS reported zero suspicious orders for its Kentucky stores from 2007 to 2014, Cameron said. Even during the height of the opioid epidemic, CVS helped promote opioid products, he said.

CVS said Wednesday that it has been involved in the fight against prescription opioid abuse. The company developed educational programs for patients and providers, created thousands of safe medication disposal sites and expanded access to life-saving overdose reversal drugs, it said.

Drug overdose deaths spiked nationally and in Kentucky during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Kentucky, overdose deaths rose by 50% from September 2019 to September 2020, compared with the previous 12 months, according to preliminary figures released in April by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Courier Journal reported. Addiction experts say the pandemic left people stressed and isolated, disrupted treatment and recovery programs, and contributed to an increasingly dangerous illicit drug supply.