The DOJ’s Pharmacy Crusade Will Harm the Patients It’s Meant to Help

Ronald Reagan famously said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The U.S. Department of Justice is proving him right by continuing Biden-era lawsuits against pharmacies that waste taxpayer money, ignore inconvenient facts, and put federal crosshairs on the wrong culprits in America’s opioid crisis.

These lawsuits are a remnant of the opioid crisis and have the potential to bring about serious unintended consequences for patients and pharmacies big and small. 

Here’s the background: CVS Health, Walmart, Walgreens and Rite Aid all face similar lawsuits from the DOJ that alleged False Claims Act and Controlled Substance Act violations. Each of the complaints have nuances, but at their heart the government alleges that these pharmacies filled prescriptions for excessive quantities of opioids, filled opioid prescriptions significantly early, and did not do the proper due diligence to ensure the prescriptions had a legitimate medical purpose. 

In return, the pharmacies contend that it is the job of the Drug Enforcement Agency to properly monitor the distribution and prescribing of these medications, while also rebutting the merits of the lawsuits. And the simple fact is that these pharmacists were doing their job—filling prescriptions—and the companies have enacted many internal policies to protect against unnecessary and illegal prescription drugs making their way into patients’ hands.

As it occasionally does, the government did play a helpful role in forcing necessary changes to curb the opioid epidemic. It was a national tragedy that exposed failures in oversight and patient care, and important improvements have been made regarding how pharmacies, regulators, and physicians operate.

CVS is among the many pharmacy companies using updated and advanced systems to detect suspicious prescriptions. The pharmacy giant also expanded pharmacist training and developed programs to help patients safely manage medication. 

But as always, the government is now going too far. The Trump administration has continued a Biden-era lawsuit, even though the action will have minimal impact on patient health—but will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on yesterday’s crisis, rummaging through old records and chasing prescriptions from a decade ago.

A better idea would be joining the administration’s fight against the fentanyl crisis that’s killing tens of thousands of Americans each year, today. 

In 2023 alone, Customs and Border Protection seized more than 27,000 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill the population of the United States several times over. Most of it originates in China and moves through Mexican cartels that exploit gaps in border enforcement. Traffickers take advantage of thinly spread inspection resources and lighter enforcement at more remote border points, concealing fentanyl shipments inside legal cargo or passenger vehicles. 

Trump recognizes the threat fentanyl poses to Americans; it’s the stated reason he’s ordered several successful strikes on Venezuelan drug smugglers, and he’s raised awareness about China’s role in fentanyl entering our country.

That’s why expecting pharmacists to challenge legitimate prescriptions from board-certified physicians makes no sense. These aren’t drug smugglers seeking to poison Americans in exchange for ungodly sums of money. Pharmacists are trained to understand how medications can helppeople.

Unnecessary lawsuits put them in the position of trying to guess the line between compassion and abuse—and that may mean cancer patients and the elderly in hospices do not receive important pain relief and other care with a pass-through effect that could raise prices both at the pharmacy window and inside the store.

The DOJ’s opioid lawsuits have already produced more than $10 billion in settlements—a disturbing amount of which has potentially been misspent by state and local governments. Many of these are the same government authorities that want to put the pharmacy companies in corporate prison.  And that brings us back to Reagan’s famous quip about government overreach. The Trump administration has done a lot right to resize and redirect government. It’s finally closing the borders, slowing the flow of fentanyl, and fighting crime.

It’s time for the DOJ to support the rest of the administration’s correct priorities instead of wasting money on the Biden administration’s misguided holdovers. Everyone will win—patients, consumers and taxpayers—and the Trump administration.

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