Lakewood pharmacy implicated in investigation of national drug supplier
Federal prosecutors have accused a national drug distributor of ignoring federal law during an eight-year period and contributing to Americans' drug abuse deaths, the numbers of which reached six figures nationally - and two locally - during that stretch.
"Our complaint alleges that the company's repeated and systemic failure to fulfill this simple obligation helped ignite an opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade," stated DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in a Department of Justice press release.
The complaint was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It in, federal prosecutors allege that AmerisourceBergen Corporation (and two of its subsidiaries, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation and Integrated Commercialization Solutions, LLC) violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report at least hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders of controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Administration since 2014.
The complaint alleges AmerisourceBergen "flouted its legal obligations and prioritized profits over the well-being of Americans," as stated in the press release.
"Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement," stated U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta in the press release. "Our complaint alleges that AmerisourceBergen, which sold billions of units of prescription opioids over the past decade, repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement."
The alleged unlawful conduct includes filling and failing to report numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids. Prosecutors accuse AmerisourceBergen of knowing about the existence of illicit markets created by the diversion of opioids it was distributing, yet the distributor continued to supply the drugs.
In fact, prosecutors suggest the company targeted distribution in areas whose clients displayed a perceived predisposition for drug abuse. Five such examples were cited in the complaint - two pharmacies in New Jersey, and one each in Florida, Virginia and Colorado.
As stated in the complaint, AmerisourceBergen knew the Colorado pharmacy was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in the state.
"The government further alleges that for this Colorado pharmacy, AmerisourceBergen specifically identified eleven patients as potential 'drug addicts' whose prescriptions likely were illegitimate," the complaint reads. "Two of those patients subsequently died of overdoses."
The Colorado pharmacy is named in the complaint as "Pharmacy 5" located in Lakewood. No other identifying details were provided.
CBS4 asked a spokesperson from the U.S. Attorney General Office in the District of Colorado whether the Lakewood pharmacy would be the subject of a separate criminal prosecution. The spokesperson replied that the office had no comment.
According to the Department of Justice's press release, AmerisourceBergen, if found legally liable for its hundreds of thousands of violations, could face potentially totaling billions of dollars in civil penalties.
