AmerisourceBergen, one of the country's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, was accused by the Justice Department of knowingly distributing narcotics that were later sold illegally.
The suit, filed by the department's civil division in conjunction with federal prosecutors in New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York, is part of a growing effort by federal agencies to hold drug companies accountable. AmerisourceBergen and two of its subsidiaries are accused of violating the Controlled Substances Act. Vanita Gupta is the associate attorney general overseeing the civil division.
AmerisourceBergen is required to report suspicious orders of controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The legitimacy of a customer's business is one of the reasons why an order is suspicious.
The Justice Department accused AmerisourceBergen of failing to report many of these suspicious orders for nearly a decade, in what it described as an "egregious failure" that had contributed to the opiate epidemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than ninety thousand people died from drug overdoses in the US in 2020. In close to 75% of the deaths, the drugs were involved.
Understand how the drug affects you. Fentanyl is a drug that is very addictive. It is easy to overdose on a small amount. There is only a short time to save a person's life during an overdose with Fentanyl.
Don't go to unlicensed pharmacy. Fentanyl is found in many prescription drugs sold online or by unlicensed dealers. Only pills that were prescribed by your doctor are allowed to be taken.
You should talk to your friends and family. Fentanyl use can be prevented by educating your loved ones about it. Fentanyl can be found in pills purchased online or from friends. The aim is to establish an ongoing dialogue in short spurts.
You can learn how to spot overdoses. When someone overdoses on Fentanyl, their skin becomes bluish. Call the emergency number if you think someone is abusing drugs. If you are concerned that a loved one could be exposed to Fentanyl, you may want to buy Narcan, a medicine that can reverse an overdose in a matter of minutes.
The complaint states that AmerisourceBergen knew that its drugs were being sold in parking lots for cash. The employees of a New Jersey pharmacy had been charged with drug offenses.
11 of the pharmacy's customers were identified as possibly having drug addictions, but AmerisourceBergen continued to supply the pharmacy despite this. The complaint states that at least two of them died of overdoses.
AmerisourceBergen, based in Conshohocken, Pa., is one of several drug companies that reached a $26 billion settlement with the government in February.
Philip R Sellinger, the U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, said AmerisourceBergen put its profits from opioid sales over the safety of Americans.
He said that this was part of a systemic failure by one of the largest companies in America to comply with its obligations to report suspicious orders.
The allegations against the company were particularly disturbing because they were only a few miles from neighborhoods devastated by the opiate epidemic.
AmerisourceBergen said the complaint focused on five pharmacies that were cherry-picked out of tens of thousands of pharmacies that use AmerisourceBergen as their wholesale distributor.
The company reported the sales and hundreds of suspicious orders of controlled substances to the D.E.A., after it verified the registration and licenses of the pharmacy.
The D.E.A. didn't feel the need to take swift action because AmerisourceBergen gave them so much information.
AmerisourceBergen's revenue was $214 billion in 2011.
Despite knowing that many of their pills were being diverted to the illegal market, company executives did not report a lot of suspicious transactions.
According to the complaint, AmerisourceBergen executives ignored red flags of drug diversion and relied on inadequate internal systems to watch suspicious orders. The company was accused of changing records to reduce the number of suspicious controlled substances.
If AmerisourceBergen is found liable, it could face fines of up to $10,000 for each reporting violation before November 2015; up to $16,864 for each violation between November 2015 and October 2018; and up to $109,374 for each violation after October 2018).
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