Walmart to pay $50 million for its role in bolstering the opioid crisis

The Justice Department announced this week that Walmart must pay $50 million to resolve claims “that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious prescriptions for opioids,” reports Ishani Desai for The New York Times. 

In 2020, government lawyers alleged that Walmart, the biggest retailer in the country and a mainstay in many rural communities, failed to detect and report ‘shady’ orders, thus fueling the opioid crisis — a crisis that disproportionately impacts rural communities. 

“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,” Desai reports. 

The federal suit cited an instance in which an employee admitted to filling illegitimate and lethal doses of an opioid, and another in Florida of a doctor for whom Walmart filled over 3,500 controlled prescriptions. Workers who flagged such practices “were ignored in part to drive sales.” 

The settlement was announced as a government effort “to hold companies accountable for what it says were their roles in the opioid epidemic.” A Walmart spokesperson said the company was pleased to resolve the case.