A Florida court is hearing arguments on whether a pharmacy can be held liable for dispensing prescribed medication. I’m Amy E. Feldman.
Pharmacies can be held liable for filling a prescription with the wrong pills if someone gets hurt. But in a case now on trial in Florida, a jury will decide whether Walgreens can be held responsible for dispensing medication as written in a prescription from a licensed doctor.
The Attorney General of Florida is arguing Walgreens should be held responsible for not stopping the distribution of drugs it knew or should have known were fueling the opioid crisis based on evidence that one of its distribution centers sold 2.2 million opioid tablets to a single pharmacy, which would have amounted to a six-month supply for every one of the town’s twelve thousand residents. We’ll see if the Florida jury will follow in the footsteps of other juries, including one in Ohio that recently found that pharmacies are responsible not just for the safe—but also the appropriate—use of drug products that it sells.
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