In the United States, a federal law obliges drug distributors to report suspicious orders, likely to fuel illicit trafficking, said Deputy Minister Vanita Gupta during a press conference.

"From 2014 until today, AmerisourceBergen and two of its subsidiaries have violated this obligation for hundreds of thousands of orders," she continued, estimating that the company could be condemned to pay billions of dollars. penalty dollars.

According to the complaint, the company ignored troubling information about five pharmacies with exorbitant order volumes, including highly addictive opiate painkillers.

It would have continued to deliver to a Florida pharmacy until December 2019, although one of its employees reported that customers were trafficking in its parking lot.

According to the New Jersey federal prosecutor, AmerisourceBergen did not simply turn a blind eye to the red flags: "The complaint alleges that it voluntarily modified its electronic surveillance programs to ensure that reports to the anti-drug agency (DEA) drop 99%," noted Philip Sellinger.

As a result, the company, according to him, sent only 350 reports to this agency in 2017 compared to 200,000 and 40,000 made by its two main competitors.

The company "prioritized its profits over its legal obligations and the well-being of Americans," said Vanita Gupta.

In a statement, AmericasourceBergen said the complaint "was simply an attempt to shift blame from past administrations and the DEA" for the opiate crisis to the industries they regulate.

Laboratories and pharmaceutical distributors are accused of having, from 1996, aggressively promoted opiate painkillers such as oxycodone, which can only be delivered on prescription.

Their dangerousness came to light in the mid-2010s with an explosion of opiate-related overdoses, whether prescribed drugs resold on the illegal drug market, or synthetic drugs such as fentanyl.

About 600,000 people have died from it in 20 years.

Many agreements have been reached in recent years to put an end to the avalanche of lawsuits against players in the sector.

AmerisourceBergen thus agreed in February to pay 6.1 billion dollars within the framework of an agreement concluded with states and local authorities.

© 2022 AFP