DOJ is suing Walgreens over allegations that prescriptions have been written and not using a medical objective

In an aerial photo, a customer enters a Walgreens store in San Pablo, California, on January 4, 2024.

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The Justice Department announced Friday that it had sued the pharmacy giant Walgreens for allegedly dispensing millions of illegal prescriptions.

The DOJ said that from August 2012 to the present, Walgreens “knowingly” filled those prescriptions that “did not have a legitimate medical purpose, were invalid, and/or were not filled in the course of normal professional practice.”

“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for its many years of failure to meet its obligations in dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Brian Boynton, Assistant Attorney General and Chief of the DOJ’s Civil Division.

Boynton said Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with “clear warning signs indicating that the prescriptions were most likely unlawful.”

The company “systematically pressured its pharmacists to write prescriptions, including prescriptions for controlled substances, without taking the time necessary to confirm their validity,” Boynton said. “These practices resulted in millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances flowing illegally from Walgreens stores.”

Some Walgreens patients died as a result of overdoses shortly after receiving invalid prescriptions at Walgreens, the DOJ alleges.

The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Walgreens said in a statement: “We are asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect us from the government's attempt to impose arbitrary 'rules' that are not contained in any law or regulation and have never been made official.” have gone through the rulemaking process.”

“We will not stand idly by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation by trying to follow 'rules' that simply don't exist,” Walgreens said.

“Walgreens stands behind our pharmacists, dedicated healthcare professionals who live in the communities they serve and write legitimate prescriptions for FDA-approved medications written by DEA-licensed prescribers in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

The lawsuit alleges that while Walgreens issued written policies that reflected its understanding of legal obligations, the company took other actions that it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying.

“Walgreens prioritized profits over safety and compliance by implementing policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly and did not allow pharmacists sufficient time or resources to fulfill their related responsibilities,” the lawsuit says.

“One such metric was 'Verify By Promise Time' (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription for a 'waiter' (a customer waiting for the prescription at the pharmacy) within 15 minutes,” it said in the lawsuit.

“Walgreens also tracked pharmacists who dispensed small amounts of controlled substances through its 'Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,'” the lawsuit states.

“Walgreens created this metric in part because it believed that pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for controlled substances were detrimental to Walgreens’ customer service.”