![]() Walmart says federal regulators trying to shift blame attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, in a statement. "Walmart's own pharmacists reported concerns about the doctor up the corporate chain, but for years, Walmart did nothing except continue to dispense thousands of opioid pills," said Robert Higdon, the U.S. A pharmacist at a Walmart store in Texas said filling opioid prescriptions "is a risk that keeps me up at night."Īs part of its complaint against Walmart, the Justice Department pointed to one case in North Carolina where a doctor was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegal opioid prescribing. Pharmacists sent emails to Walmart executives saying they feared losing their licenses and their jobs because of opioid sales.Īccording to the DOJ complaint, patients often paid in cash, also considered a red flag by the DEA. Pharmacists complained that dangerous "pill-mill" doctors were sending patients to Walmart after other chains stopped filling their opioid prescriptions. If you do so, your employment is going to be terminated immediately,' " Sheoran said, describing a warning he said was issued by his supervisor. "They told me, 'Do not reach out to the DEA, do not call the police. "They start putting more pressure on me to just be quiet and not to say anything more," Sheoran said. He warned that their pharmacies were feeding a black market for opioids like Oxycontin. He started raising alarms, sending emails to his bosses in Michigan and to Walmart headquarters in Arkansas. They couldn't explain why they needed such powerful opioid doses. Sheoran, now 41, told NPR he kept seeing what the Drug Enforcement Administration considers "red flags." Patients were driving long distances to buy their pills from Walmart. ![]() This was in 2012 when the prescription opioid epidemic was exploding, killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. "I see my patients, 15 to 20, already lined up to get prescriptions filled for morphine sulfate, oxycodone and other straight narcotics," he said. When Ashwani Sheoran showed up for early morning shifts at pharmacies in rural Michigan wearing his white Walmart smock, he often found customers waiting, desperate for bottles of pain pills. Ashwani Sheoran, 41, says that when he worked as pharmacist at different Walmarts, he spoke up about the handling of opioid prescriptions and was told to stay quiet and was eventually let go.
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