The DEA accused Walgreens on Friday of
endangering public safety and barred the company from shipping oxycodone
and other controlled drugs from its Jupiter, Fla., distribution center.
The
move is the latest action by the Drug Enforcement Agency in a crackdown
on pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and drugstore chains
that sell large amounts of highly addictive narcotics. Earlier this
week, the DEA revoked the controlled substances licenses for two CVS
pharmacies in Sanford, Fla., accused of dispensing excessive amounts of
oxycodone.
The
DEA says Walgreens failed to maintain proper controls to ensure it
didn't dispense drugs to addicts and drug dealers. Large increases in
narcotic sales could be a sign that drug addicts and dealers are using
fake prescriptions to purchase the drugs, the agency says. The addicts
and dealers often get the prescriptions from clinics, known as "pill
mills," where doctors prescribe the drugs after only cursory
examinations.
And the community Pharmacist's blog response
Instead they pick the easy target, the community pharmacist. They question OUR judgment and give us ZERO opportunity to respond or explain why our decisions are made. They limit our ability to purchase medications. They threaten our suppliers if they don’t collect our patient’s private health data and turn it over to them.
We are being used as scapegoats for the meth craze and now the oxycodone explosion. The DEA is a typical bureaucratic entity that rather than solves the actual problem, would rather collect fines and pat themselves on the back publicly than listen to community pharmacists who MIGHT actually have some good ideas on how to address this problem.
