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West Virginia sues Wal-Mart, CVS over opioids

CHARLESTON — West Virginia has sued Wal-Mart and CVS, saying the companies should pay for helping create the state’s opioid epidemic and act to remediate what became a public health and financial crisis, the state attorney general said.

The lawsuits allege Wal-Mart and CVS, as individual distributors, supplied far more opioids to their retail pharmacies than necessary to meet a legitimate market and not even that was enough as the retail pharmacies ordered additional pills from other distributors to fulfill demand.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey contends Wal-Mart and CVS each knew its obligation to halt suspicious orders to its retail pharmacies, but failed to monitor for and report such activity.

“We must hold everyone accountable for the roles they played in the opioid epidemic and continue to push toward solutions that go after the root cause of the problem,” Morrisey said.

Wal-Mart and CVS were each among the state’s top 10 opioid distributors from 2006 to 2014.

Wal-Mart between 2006 and 2104 sold the equivalent of about 56 million 10 mg oxycodone pills in West Virginia. CVS sold the equivalent of about 48 million pills during the same period, according to the lawsuits.

The civil complaints, filed Tuesday in Putnam County Circuit Court, do not assert claims related to either company’s role in dispensing opioids to patients, but maintain that such retail data offered Wal-Mart and CVS unique knowledge and notice that their operations were meeting more than a legitimate market demand.

Rather than report suspicious orders and stop diversion, the lawsuits allege Wal-Mart and CVS continued to sell, ship and profit from the highly dangerous and addictive prescription painkillers.

The lawsuits allege conduct by Wal-Mart and CVS violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act and caused a public nuisance. Both lawsuits seek injunctive and equitable relief.

Morrisey filed similar lawsuits in June against Rite-Aid and Walgreens, and those filings followed others last year against opioid manufacturers Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions Inc. and Mallinckrodt LLC.

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