Walmart settles DOJ opioid crisis lawsuit for $50 million

Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of illegal prescriptions for controlled substances that fueled the opioid crisis, the Justice Department announced Friday.

The settlement resolves a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 that accused the retail giant of failing to report suspicious orders at its pharmacies to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The government alleged that Walmart’s compliance team knowingly filled invalid prescriptions written by prescribers operating as “pill mills” even after pharmacists raised concerns about them.

“Over an approximately four-year period, a time during which Walmart shipped an estimated 37.5 million controlled-substance orders to its pharmacies, it reported only 204 suspicious orders to D.E.A. — in other words, almost none,” according to court documents.

As part of the settlement, Walmart will create a hotline for workers and patients to report suspected illegal dispensing of controlled substances. The company will also monitor dispensing activity at its pharmacies and establish a system to review doctors that are suspected of improper prescribing.

“This $50 million settlement makes clear that pharmacies have a responsibility to identify and prevent the unlawful dispensing of controlled substances,” DEA assistant administrator Cheri Oz said in a statement. “Filling illegitimate opioid prescriptions puts patients and communities at risk and undermines the safeguards designed to prevent the diversion and misuse of potentially addictive medications.”

Oz added, “This settlement addresses past conduct while establishing clear compliance obligations designed to strengthen safeguards and help prevent these failures from happening again.”

This is the latest opioid-related settlement involving Walmart, the world’s largest retail chain.

In 2022, the company agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits brought by states that accused its pharmacies of contributing to the opioid crisis.

Other major pharmacy operators have reached similar settlements, including Kroger, which agreed in 2023 to pay $1.2 billion to states and local governments over its handling of prescriptions.

About 806,000 people have died from overdoses involving prescription drugs between 1999 and 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.