{"id":35913,"date":"2021-06-02T17:36:51","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T00:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=35913"},"modified":"2021-06-03T17:37:14","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T00:37:14","slug":"kentucky-accuses-cvs-health-of-fueling-crisis-in-new-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=35913","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky accuses CVS Health of fueling crisis in new suit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) is accusing CVS Health of \u201cfueling\u201d the opioid crisis in the state in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/owzmscfgqttdpcptdkwqqdmmqfdntftvvlqgcrnttqwlkw_phchmmjqjbhlqqlcfdqc.html?a=&amp;b=39567\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/owzmscfgqttdpcptdkwqqdmmqfdntftvvlqgcrnttqwlkw_phchmmjqjbhlqqlcfdqc.html?a%3D%26b%3D39567&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1622759128190000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFXqSSdeICdHkg1g2q31t_OGwTZAg\">lawsuit filed<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Cameron sued the health care company in Franklin Circuit Court, alleging that its \u201cunlawful business practices\u201d and failure to \u201cguard against the diversion of opioids\u201d contributed to Kentucky\u2019s epidemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs both distributor and pharmacy, CVS was in a unique position to monitor and stop the peddling of these highly-addictive drugs from their stores, yet they ignored their own safeguard systems,\u201d Cameron said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>By the numbers:\u00a0<\/strong>The lawsuit said CVS pharmacies in Kentucky bought more than 151 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from its own distribution centers and third-party distributors between 2006 and 2014. That amounts to almost 6.1 percent of the dosage units in the state at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Cameron specifically highlighted two CVS stores in Perry County and Crittenden County that each bought enough dosage units to supply every county resident with 26 pills and 34 pills every year, respectively.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CVS response:\u00a0<\/strong>CVS Health told The Hill in a statement that it\u2019s ready to defend against the lawsuit\u2019s allegations and that it invested in fighting opioid misuse and abuse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpioids are made and marketed by drug manufacturers, not pharmacies,\u201d the statement said. \u201cPharmacists dispense opioid prescriptions written by licensed physicians for a legitimate medical need. Pharmacists do not \u2014 and cannot \u2014 write prescriptions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R)&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35914,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35913\/revisions\/35914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}