Walgreens and Oxycodone
The DEA accused Walgreens on Friday of endangering public safety and barred the company from shipping oxycodone and other controlled drugs from its Jupiter, Fla., distribution center.
The move is the latest action by the Drug Enforcement Agency in a crackdown on pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and drugstore chains that sell large amounts of highly addictive narcotics. Earlier this week, the DEA revoked the controlled substances licenses for two CVS pharmacies in Sanford, Fla., accused of dispensing excessive amounts of OxyContin.
Abuse of prescription narcotics is an epidemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overdose deaths from opiod pain relievers account for more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.
The DEA says Walgreens failed to maintain proper controls to ensure it didn’t dispense drugs to addicts and drug dealers. Large increases in narcotic sales could be a sign that drug addicts and dealers are using fake prescriptions to purchase the drugs, the agency says. The addicts and dealers often get the prescriptions from clinics, known as “pill mills,” where doctors prescribe the drugs after only cursory examinations.
Six of Walgreens’ Florida pharmacies ordered more than a million pills a year, the DEA said. In 2011, the average pharmacy in the U.S. ordered 73,000 oxycodone tablets a year.
One pharmacy in Fort Myers went from ordering 95,800 pills in 2009 to 2.2 million pills in 2011, the DEA said. Another pharmacy in Hudson, a town of 34,000 people near Clearwater, purchased 2.2 million pills in 2011, the DEA said.