PA's AmerisourceBergen Fueled Opioid Crisis, Federal Lawsuit Claims

CONSHOHOCKEN, PA — Montgomery County-based AmerisourceBergen is the latest company that may have to answer for its role in the opioid epidemic, as authorities in several states have announced a joint civil suit against the pharmaceutical giant.

Tens of thousands of Americans have been killed per year over the past decade-plus due to opioid overdoses and related causes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reckoning is well underway, as the Keystone State has already received massive settlements from several other conglomerates to help redress the impacts.

AmerisourceBergen, one of the nation's largest drug distributors, failed to report at least hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders of the substance, the suit alleges. Federal officials say that Amerisource Bergen filled prescriptions from pharmacies which they knew were facilitiating "diversion" prescriptions, or prescriptions used for illegal purposes.

"The allegations against AmerisourceBergen are disturbing, especially for a company that is headquartered only a few miles from neighborhoods in Philadelphia devastated by the opioid epidemic," U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero said in a statement. "This lawsuit sends a strong message to the community that companies who fail to comply with their controlled substance legal obligations will be held accountable.”

U.S. Attorneys for districts in New Jersey, Colorado, and eastern New York joined eastern Pennsylvania in the suit.

In 2022 alone, Pennsylvania has already seen cash from billion-dollar plus opioid settlements with Endo, Teva, and Purdue pharmaceuticals. The Keystone State alone received $1 billion in the Purdue deal, although, famously, no members of the company's ruling Sackler family have ever seen jail time as a result.

Previously, Johnson & Johnson and the “big three” distributors, McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, agreed to a landmark $26 billion settlement of 3,000 opioid crisis-related lawsuits nationwide.

In general, the money is to be spent on evidence-based programs that save lives, prevention programs for youths, and racial equity initiatives. Shapiro vowed as recently as September that money from settlements would be used strictly for drug prevention-related programs, not general funds as in the past.

It's not clear how much money the suit is seeking from AmerisourceBergen.