First major drug distribution company, former executives, criminally charged in opioid crisis
It’s a milestone achievement in the fight to combat the American opioid crisis as executives of one of the country’s largest drug distributors have been criminally charged.
Rochester Drug Co-Operative, one of the top 10 largest drug distributors in the United States, was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to violate narcotics laws, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and willfully failing to file suspicious order reports.
Laurence Doud III, the company’s former chief executive, and William Pietruszewski, the company’s former chief compliance officer, are individually charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Pietruszewski is also charged with willfully failing to file suspicious order reports with the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.
Both men could face life in prison.
As one of the country’s ten largest drug distributors, RDC is accused of supplying tens of millions of doses of oxycodone, fentanyl and other opioids to pharmacies between 2012 and 2016. In this first of it’s kind action involving pharmaceutical executives, the U.S. attorney’s office vows to “do everything in its power to combat this epidemic, from street-level dealers to the executives who illegally distribute drugs from their boardrooms.”
Prosecutors said Rochester Drug Co-Operative went against the DEA and its own policies and distributed drugs to pharmacies that were “filling controlled substances prescriptions issued by practitioners acting outside the scope of their medical practice, under investigation by law enforcement, or on RDC’s ‘watch list.'”
Rochester Drug Co-Operative “distributed controlled substances to those pharmacies even after identifying ‘red flags,'” a statement from the U.S. attorney said. And at Doud’s direction, the company took on pharmacies that had been terminated by other distributors.
This case uncovered staggering numbers including 8,300 “potentially suspicious ‘orders of interest,” distribution of oxycodone tablets increasing from 4.7 million to 42.2 million, sales leaping from approximately 63,000 dosages in 2012 to more than 1.3 million in 2016, and Doud’s compensation swelling to a whopping $1.5 million a year.
RDC has been under new managements since 2017 and admits wrongdoing. They’ve agreed to operating under the eye of an independent watchdog, improving its broken compliance program and coughing up a fine of $20 million.
Spokesman Jeff Eller attributes much of the company’s mistakes to the overwhelming demand for the drugs as well as gaps in the (previous) compliance program:
“One element of the opioid epidemic is a dramatic increase in the volume of prescriptions for opioids and all narcotics,” Eller said. “From 2012 to 2017, we did not have adequate systems in place nor were our compliance team and practices rigorous enough to provide adequate controls and oversight over the increased demand for narcotic drug products from pharmacies.”
RDC states that as of 2017 it has made significant improvements to its compliance program – a step in the right direction, but is it too little, too late?
SOURCE:
1: NBCNews.com
