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Walmart has settled with the US Department of Justice to resolve a lawsuit that accused the retail behemoth of unlawfully filling prescriptions for painkillers, fuelling the nation’s opioid epidemic.
The justice department confirmed the settlement, though the terms of the agreement were not immediately available. Court filings showed the federal government agreed to dismiss the case.
“We will continue to hold accountable companies and individuals whose unlawful prescribing, marketing, dispensing or distributing practices contributed to the opioid crisis and put American communities at risk,” a DoJ spokesperson said.
A Walmart spokesperson said: “We are pleased to resolve this matter and will continue supporting the exceptional work our pharmacists do every day to provide outstanding patient care.”
The US government sued Walmart in December 2020 alleging the company filled invalid prescriptions and failed to report orders of opioids and other drugs that were suspicious. The lawsuit followed a multiyear investigation by the justice department.
The suit said Walmart’s managers made it “exceedingly difficult” for its pharmacists to comply with legal requirements for filling prescriptions by pressuring them to do so “as quickly as possible”.
Walmart had preemptively sued the DoJ and US Drug Enforcement Agency in October 2020 and suggested that its pharmacists were put in an impossible bind by federal authorities. The retailer said at the time that it had blocked “thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled”. The suit was thrown out in 2021.
The company stood to face billions of dollars in penalties if found liable. In 2022, Walmart separately said it would pay $3.1bn to settle states’ claims it contributed to the opioid epidemic by failing to regulate prescriptions for the highly addictive drugs at its stores.
Between 1999 and 2023, deaths caused by drug overdoses increased approximately 520 per cent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, annual deaths started to decline after 2022.
