Opioid crisis in the United States: Walmart, Walgreens and CVS ordered to pay damages

OxyContin and other opiates for pain have been over-prescribed by the American medical community for years, leading to growing addiction.

REUTERS/George Frey

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Convictions related to the opioid crisis continue to grow in the United States.

This time around, drugstore chains Walmart, Walgreens and CVS were ordered by an Ohio judge on Wednesday to pay more than $650 million to the two counties in that state.

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The $650 million will go to Lake and Trumbull counties to fund education and prevention programs as well as reimburse local agencies that have incurred costs to manage the opioid crisis.

The three retail giants in the United States, which had massively distributed painkillers in these two counties, were found guilty in November.

Walmart announced in a press release its intention to appeal, denouncing a lawsuit “

 ”.

A real plague

The overconsumption of opiates in the United States is a real scourge for public health.

Last year, 80,000 people died of overdoses and it is estimated that more than 500,000 have died since 1999. Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, several American states have attacked laboratories and companies in recent years, accusing them of encouraging doctors to over-prescribe these highly addictive drugs.

Several of them have reached agreements with the counties or the states to put an end to the lawsuits, in exchange, they undertake to pay billions of dollars in compensation.

four billion dollars 

At the end of July, the Israeli generic drug manufacturer Teva announced that it had agreed to pay more than 4 billion dollars to the United States for its role in the opiate crisis, an agreement which puts an end to the legal proceedings. 

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