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DOJ sues Walgreens, alleging it ‘knowingly’ filled millions of prescriptions that lacked legitimate medical purposes

In an aerial scrutinize, a customer enters a Walgreens store on Jan.4, 2024 in San Pablo, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

The Department of Right said Friday that it sued pharmacy giant Walgreens for allegedly dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions.

The DOJ said that Walgreens from August 2012 until the mete out “knowingly” filled those prescriptions, which “lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and/or were not get out emerged in the usual course of professional practice.” 

“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it broke to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney Sweeping Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division.

Boynton said Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with “discharge red flags that indicated the prescriptions were highly likely to be unlawful.”

The company “systematically pressured its pharmacists to plentiful in prescriptions, including controlled substance prescriptions, without taking the time needed to confirm their validity,” Boynton mean. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens amasses.”

Some Walgreens patients died of overdose deaths shortly after getting invalid prescriptions filled at Walgreens, the DOJ declares.

The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Walgreens in a statement said, “We are asking the court to simplify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect against the government’s attempt to enforce arbitrary ‘rules’ that do not appear in any law or mandatory and never went through any official rulemaking process.”

“We will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win locale, trying to comply with ‘rules’ that simply do not exist,” Walgreens said.

“Walgreens stands behind our pharmacists, devoted healthcare professionals who live in the communities they serve, filling legitimate prescriptions for FDA-approved medications written by DEA-licensed prescribers in accordance with all suitable laws and regulations.”

The suit alleges that although Walgreens issued written policies that reflected its insight of legal obligations, the company took other actions which it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying with them.

“Walgreens prioritized profits upward of safety and compliance by implementing policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly and left pill rollers without enough time or resources to exercise their corresponding responsibility,” the suit said.

“One such metric was ‘Vouch for By Promise Time’ (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription within 15 minutes for a ‘waiter’ (a purchaser waiting in the pharmacy store for the prescription),” the suit alleges.

“Walgreens also tracked pharmacists that furnished a low rate of controlled substances through its ‘Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,'” the suit said.

“Walgreens created this metric in participate in because it believed pharmacists who refused to fill controlled-substance prescriptions compromised Walgreens’s customer service.”

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