Opioid filing targets retailers

Incentives, workarounds fed the national crisis, according to complaint

A court filing Wednesday asserts that pharmacies including CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and Giant Eagle as well as those operated by Walmart were as complicit in perpetuating the opioid crisis as the manufacturers and distributors of the addictive drugs.

The retailers sold millions of pills in tiny communities, offered bonuses for high-volume pharmacists and even worked directly with drug manufacturers to promote opioids as safe and effective, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Cleveland by two Ohio counties.

Some specific assertions: ■ That CVS worked with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, to offer promotional seminars on pain management to its pharmacists so they could reassure patients and doctors about the safety of the drug.

■ That CVS, in partnership with Endo Pharmaceuticals, sent letters to patients encouraging them to maintain prescriptions of Opana, a potent opioid so prone to abuse that in 2017 the Food and Drug

Administration ordered its extended-release formulation removed from the market.

■ That a Rite Aid in Painesville, Ohio, a town with a population of 19,524, sold more than 4.2 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone from 2006 through 2014, and that the national retailer offered bonuses to stores with the highest productivity.

■ That a contract with the drug distributor AmerisourceBergen specified that Walgreens be allowed to police its own orders, without oversight from the distributor.

The companies could not immediately be reached for comment on the early morning filing. In the past, they have maintained