Kroger to pay $110 million to resolve Kentucky lawsuit over opioid epidemic

Kroger has agreed to pay $110 million to resolve a lawsuit by the state of Kentucky alleging the grocery store chain’s pharmacies helped gasoline a lethal opioid epidemic by flooding its communities with a whole lot of thousands and thousands of doses of addictive painkillers. The settlement was introduced on Thursday by Kentucky Legal professional Normal Russell Coleman, whose state had opted to not take part in a broader $1.4-billion deal Kroger finalized final 12 months that resolved related claims by 30 states in addition to counties, municipalities and Native American tribes.

In a lawsuit filed in state court docket in February, Coleman had alleged that Kroger’s greater than 100 Kentucky pharmacies had been chargeable for over 11% of all opioid capsules disbursed within the state from 2006 to 2019, or about 444 million opioid doses. The lawsuit alleged Kroger ought to have identified primarily based on the suspiciously excessive numbers and different crimson flags that the medication have been being diverted for illicit functions, and will have taken measures to cease shipments and refuse to fill suspicious prescriptions.

As an alternative, Kroger continued to ship huge portions of opioids all through the state, did not report suspicious orders to authorities and continued to dispense addictive medication at “alarming” charges in Kentucky, which was hard-hit by the drug-addiction epidemic, based on the lawsuit.

“This huge grocery chain that requested for our belief and our enterprise allowed the hearth of habit to unfold throughout the commonwealth, leaving ache and leaving a lot brokenness in its aftermath,” Coleman mentioned at a press convention.

The Cincinnati-based grocery store chain, whose $25-billion proposed merger with rival Albertsons was terminated after courts blocked the deal final month, mentioned in an announcement it hoped the settlement funds could be used to fight opioid abuse in Kentucky.

The corporate didn’t admit wrongdoing as a part of the settlement and Kroger referred to as the claims that it didn’t have inner coaching or guardrails round filling prescriptions for opioids “patently false.”

In line with the settlement settlement, Kentucky acquired a considerable premium above what it could have acquired had it joined the sooner broader settlement with Kroger. Had it finished so, Kentucky would have recovered $66.6 million. Drug producers, distributors, pharmacy operators and others have agreed to pay about $50 billion to resolve lawsuits and investigations by states and native governments over their roles within the drug-overdose epidemic.

Almost 727,000 folks within the U.S. died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2022, based on the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.