McKesson hid security flaws that fueled opioid epidemic, the lawsuit alleges – by ALEX KACIK
McKesson Corp. allegedly concealed security flaws in its supply chain, which fueled the opioid epidemic, according to a recently unsealed whistleblower case.
Former employees at the wholesale drug distribution giant claim that McKesson would hide the extent of its security issues from the federal government and falsely represented that it would comply with two settlement agreements. Millions of the addictive pain pills were diverted to the black market as a result, according to the lawsuit.
This is the source of all the opioid medications that flooded the black market. (I’ve been pointing this out for years.)
And, since that source of massive diversion has been slowly shut down, street drug users have simply switched drugs, first to heroin or fake opioid pills and now to other powders like methamphetamine and cocaine.
Overdoses are very rarely from prescribed opioids, but from multiple street drugs contaminated by poisonous quantities of fentanyl.
“McKesson could easily tighten security to significantly reduce the illegal diversion of opioids, but McKesson refuses to take these necessary measures because doing so would adversely impact McKesson’s profitability,” the amended complaint reads.
The government declined to intervene in the case.
This outrage makes me quiver with fury.
The same “government” prosecutes doctors for prescribing opioids to patients with a legitimate need for opioid pain relief to preserve their quality of life and doctors kick out patients who take even one more pill than directed.
But no one intervenes when a distributor ships millions of pills to known pill mills. This reeks of bribery and corruption, just as we’ve long known about and condemned in so many third world countries.
What kind of a country are we living in now?
According to the complaint, McKesson hired a security expert in 2006 who could easily access opioid storage areas in its distribution centers. Alleged vulnerabilities in its IT system allowed external access to corporate financial accounts and diminished the accuracy of its inventory accounting.
Managers allegedly hid security breaches and operated “internal compliance teams” with insufficient funds and oversight.
This is another problem with all the corporate cost-cutting practices these days. Any part of the company that doesn’t genertate a profit is starved of funds and shoved aside in the avarice of CEO’s and their ilk and encouraged by stokholders.demanding ever increasing stock valuations.
According to the lawsuit, McKesson simply reshipped orders when products were not received or were incorrectly labeled and did not investigate or report the problem.
Similar allegations are being made in related lawsuits from thousands of municipalities
The Food and Drug Administration sent McKesson a warning letter on Feb. 7 that detailed several violations. McKesson failed to mitigate mislabeled prescriptions sent to Rite Aid and GlaxoSmithKline. Three Rite Aid pharmacies received bottles labeled as containing 100 oxycodone pills that were broken and had been replaced with other drugs.
I’ve been complaining about the lack of scrutiny in the supply chain for years since that’s the most likely source of the millions of “real” opioid pills that ended up on the streets.
Those huge quantities could not have come from grandma’s medicine cabinet or even individuals selling their pills – the volume of diversion was just too much.
McKesson’s internal investigation revealed that the tampering occurred while the drugs were in its possession, but the company did not identify all of the illegitimate product, notify its clients or alert authorities, according to the letter.
Distributors maintain that the lawsuits are misguided because the companies don’t manufacture the drugs or promote or prescribe prescription medications to the public and actively combat the diversion of opioids.
This is like kindergarten kids all pointing fingers at everyone else saying “it wasn’t me, it was him”. Something has gone very wrong in the corporate culture when such behavior is tolerated (remember, the government chose not to intervene).
EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info 
Reblogged this on The War on Chronic Pain Patients.
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This was the real story, and at the same time they blocked the DEA from being able to act on the data. The pharma industry ran a false narrative about patients and doctors to keep the public distracted. They are still running this false narrative in order to avoid divulging the facts. They have been scrutinizing patients and their physicians, instead of going after the real players. The PDMP should have proven that patients and physicians had little to do with this problem, but they decided not to collect that data, or apply any facts to this debacle.
They have been running this false narrative for 20 years now, it is untrue that physicians and patients did not know that these drugs were addictive. There were warnings for years, and added scrutiny on legitimate patients. They have been scaring the heck out of people, with many so afraid to take an opiate that they refuse them on their deathbeds. There are quite a few people who have made a lot of money misinforming the public. The pockets of the health and pharma industry lobbyists are deep, with plenty of money to control the narrative. They undermined the regulatory agencies, and the FTC refused to monitor online advertising and misinformation.
The US is fact free, and not one of these agencies looked at the unintended consequences. Nearly every day another industry funded “study” with dubious and misleading statistics is run by a media outlet. C-Span covered the hearings on the “Opioid Epidemic,” where politicians repeated lies, and false narrative they picked up from the pharma industry via media. The For Profit, Market Based Healthcare System is to blame. Patients are a good scapegoat, to take attention away form this nation’s Epidemic of Despair.
Like every other problem in the US, just Follow The Money. They are allowing the very same corporations that covered up the diversion of opioids from the supply chain, to “educate kids” on opioids. They can combine misinforming kids with advertising, and appear to be “giving back.” The same corporations that shipped jobs to China, kept their workers underpaid and reliant on public assistance, are applauded for marketing directly to children. The very same corporations that put candy and soft drinks at a toddlers eye level, to increase sales, are “educating” children on drug use.
Don’t forget the CDC allows any kind of marketing as long as it contains a public health message. That is how JUUL introduced kids to nicotine addiction and death by vaping. This is the result of End Times Capitalism, where nothing is off limits, marketing to children or for that matter, vulnerable sick people, is just innovative marketing.
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