DOJ sues Walmart for 'fueling the opioid crisis' by 'turning its 5,000 stores into leading suppliers of addictive painkillers and failing to properly screen questionable prescriptions'

The Department of Justice has sued Walmart, accusing the retail giant of fueling the opioid crisis by unlawfully dispensing controlled substances from its thousands of pharmacies across the country.

The 160-page civil complaint filed on Tuesday accuses Walmart of hundreds of thousands of violations of the Controlled Substances Act and seeks penalties which could total in the billions of dollars.

As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids,' said Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, in a statement. 

'Instead, for years, it did the opposite — filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies,' he added.

Walmart blasted the lawsuit as factually inaccurate and legally baseless in a strongly worded statement to DailyMail.com, vowing to fight the DOJ's claims in court.

The Department of Justice has sued Walmart, accusing the retail giant of fueling the opioid crisis. Above, a Walmart pharmacy is seen 

'The Justice Department's investigation is tainted by historical ethics violations, and this lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context,' a Walmart spokesman said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

'Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA's well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place,' the statement added. 

Walmart stock closed down 1.2 percent on Tuesday after news of the lawsuit broke. 

Walmart operates one of the nation's largest pharmacy chains, with more than 5,000 locations across the country.

The Justice Department's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, accused Walmart of failing to take its gatekeeping duties as a pharmacy seriously. 

The government's complaint said 'Walmart managers put enormous pressure on pharmacists to fill prescriptions - requiring pharmacists to process a high volume of prescriptions as fast as possible, while at the same time denying them the authority to categorically refuse to fill prescriptions issued by prescribers the pharmacists knew were continually issuing invalid prescriptions.'

The complaint alleges that Walmart officials declined to allow pharmacists to issue a blanket ban on prescriptions from known 'pill-mill' doctors -- prescribers who churn out huge numbers of dubious prescriptions for painkillers. 

Instead, overworked Walmart pharmacists were told to evaluate each prescription on a case-by-case basis for red flags, according to the complaint. 

'Walmart knew that its distribution centers were using an inadequate system for detecting and reporting suspicious orders,' said Jason Dunn, the U.S. attorney in Colorado. 

The opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of roughly 450,000 people across the United States since 1999 due to overdoses. Perdue Pharma's powerful OxyContin fueled the crisis

'As a result of this inadequate system, for years Walmart reported virtually no suspicious orders at all. In other words, Walmart's pharmacies ordered opioids in a way that went essentially unmonitored and unregulated,' he said.

Walmart blasted the claims in its statement, saying: 'Walmart sent DEA tens of thousands of investigative leads, and we blocked thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled at our pharmacies.' 

If Walmart is found liable for violating the Controlled Substances Act, it could face civil penalties of up to $67,627 for each unlawful prescription filled and $15,691 for each suspicious order not reported. 

The Justice Department's lawsuit comes nearly two months after Walmart filed its own preemptive suit against the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In its lawsuit, Walmart said the Justice Department´s investigation - launched in 2016 - had identified hundreds of doctors who wrote problematic prescriptions that Walmart´s pharmacists should not have filled. 

But the lawsuit charged that nearly 70 percent of the doctors still have active registrations with the DEA.

Walmart's lawsuit alleged the government was blaming it for the lack of regulatory and enforcement policies to stem the crisis. The company is asking a federal judge to declare the government has no basis to seek civil damages; the suit remains ongoing.

Clark said Walmart 'violated important provisions of the Controlled Substances Act that were meant to prevent such controlled substances, including prescription opioids, from being diverted for misuse and abuse.'

In October, the retailer filed a lawsuit against the federal government seeking clarity on the roles and legal responsibilities of pharmacists and pharmacies in filling opioid prescriptions.

'By demanding pharmacists and pharmacies second-guess doctors, the Justice Department is putting pharmacists and pharmacies between a rock and a hard place with state health regulators who say they are already going too far in refusing to fill opioid prescriptions,' Walmart said in a statement on Tuesday. 'Ultimately, patients are caught in the middle.' 

The opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of roughly 450,000 people across the United States since 1999 due to overdoses from prescription painkillers and illegal drugs. 

Walmart's full statement in response to DOJ lawsuit

'The Justice Department’s investigation is tainted by historical ethics violations, and this lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context. 

'Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place.

'In contrast to DEA’s own failures, Walmart always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill problematic opioids prescriptions, and they refused to fill hundreds of thousands of such prescriptions. Walmart sent DEA tens of thousands of investigative leads, and we blocked thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled at our pharmacies.

'By demanding pharmacists and pharmacies second-guess doctors, the Justice Department is putting pharmacists and pharmacies between a rock and a hard place with state health regulators who say they are already going too far in refusing to fill opioid prescriptions. Ultimately, patients are caught in the middle.

'Walmart already sued the Department and DEA to stand up for our pharmacists, and we will keep defending our pharmacists as we fight this new lawsuit in court.'