Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to settle claims that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious opioid prescriptions, contributing to the nationwide opioid crisis, the Justice Department announced Friday. The settlement resolves allegations that Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States, failed to identify and report questionable opioid orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over several years.
According to court records filed in 2020, the government accused Walmart of neglecting to act on warnings from employees who flagged potentially illegitimate prescriptions. The Justice Department stated that this disregard was partly driven by the company’s goal to boost sales. Over a span of approximately four years, during which Walmart shipped an estimated 37.5 million controlled-substance orders to its pharmacies, it reported only 204 suspicious orders to the DEA, a figure the government described as “almost none.”
The federal lawsuit highlighted specific incidents, including one in which a Walmart employee admitted to filling fraudulent prescriptions. Some pharmacists reportedly dispensed large doses that could have been fatal. In Florida, pharmacists raised concerns about a particular doctor whose patients exhibited signs of narcotic abuse and slurred speech. Despite these red flags, Walmart pharmacies filled more than 3,500 controlled-substance prescriptions for this doctor, the lawsuit stated.
Walmart has expressed satisfaction with the resolution of the case. A company spokeswoman said the settlement allows Walmart to move forward. In a 2020 statement, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, then acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, emphasized Walmart’s responsibility as a leading pharmacy chain and wholesale distributor to prevent prescription opioid diversion.
The settlement requires Walmart to implement new measures, including establishing a hotline for employees and patients to report suspected illegal dispensing of controlled substances. The company will also need to monitor dispensing patterns across its pharmacies more closely.
This settlement is part of broader federal efforts to hold corporations accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic. From 1999 through 2023, opioid overdoses, including those involving illegal and prescription drugs, have resulted in approximately 806,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In recent years, other major retailers have also reached substantial settlements related to opioid lawsuits. In 2022, Walmart agreed to allocate $3.1 billion to resolve thousands of legal claims brought by local governments and tribes. Similarly, in 2023, Kroger, another major grocery chain, consented to pay $1.2 billion to states, local governments, and tribes over allegations that its pharmacies failed to properly oversee opioid prescriptions. Kroger maintained that it admitted no wrongdoing as part of that deal.