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Walmart files pre-emptive lawsuit against US govt over opioid case
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IANS | 23 Oct, 2020
American multinational retail corporation Walmart announced it has filed
a pre-emptive lawsuit against the US government to thwart its
"completely unjustified" attempt to hold the company legally accountable
over opioid abuse across the country.
Certain Department of
Justice (DOJ) officials have been "threatening a completely unjustified
lawsuit against Walmart, claiming in hindsight pharmacists should have
refused to fill otherwise valid opioid prescriptions that were written
by the very doctors that the federal government still approves to write
prescriptions", Xinhua news agency quoted the company as saying in a
statement on Thursday.
"We are bringing this lawsuit because
there is no federal law requiring pharmacists to interfere in the
doctor-patient relationship to the degree DOJ is demanding," said the
company that operates over 5,000 pharmacies in its stores countrywide.
Walmart
added its pharmacists have been caught in a dilemma as they were
accused by the DOJ on one hand of "not going even further in
second-guessing doctors," and by health agencies and regulators on the
other of "going too far and interfering in the doctor-patient
relationship".
Also naming the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) in the lawsuit, Walmart said it needed a federal court to "clarify
the roles and legal responsibilities of pharmacists and pharmacies in
filling opioid prescriptions".
The government should not shift
the blame for its own failures in addressing the opioid crisis to
Walmart and its pharmacists, the company said in the lawsuit.
According
to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdoses
have claimed the lives of over 500,000 Americans since 1999.
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