Former DEA agent testifies against drug distributors in Baltimore opioid case: ‘Egregious amount of hydrocodone’
In October of 2005, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent contacted drug distributor McKesson and said the federal agency would be subpoenaing its records of sales to an internet pharmacy in East Baltimore.
In the 11 months that followed before McKesson terminated New Care Pharmacy as a client — and while the DEA continued investigating the pharmacy — the company sent it 3 million hydrocodone opioid pain pills, a retired DEA agent testified Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court.
"That's an egregious amount of hydrocodone to ship to a pharmacy," the former federal investigator, Ruth Carter, told jurors assembled to decide the city's civil case against McKesson and fellow distributor AmerisourceBergen.
Carter said the company neglected its responsibility to monitor New Care for suspicious orders of opioids and report such orders to the DEA, its legal obligation under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The pharmacy owners were convicted in federal court and sentenced in 2009 to five years in prison each for illegally selling hydrocodone.
"There is no due diligence, in my opinion," Carter said of McKesson's oversight of New Care. "They had glaring red flags in this instance."
Carter is testifying as the city's first expert witness in support of its allegations that McKesson and AmerisourceBergen flooded the Baltimore area with hundreds of millions of pain pills from 2006 to 2009, intentionally overlooking the havoc the opioids would wreak.
The influx of prescription opioids, city lawyers contend, created a new generation of people suffering from addiction who would go on to die at unprecedented rates when their scripts ran out and they turned to an illicit drug market inundated with deadly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
In its 2018 lawsuit, the city claimed that the actions of opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies created a public nuisance that deprived Baltimore residents of their rights to health and safety. Several drug manufacturers and pharmacy chains already have settled with the city to the tune of at least $402.5 million.
Carter's testimony Tuesday followed that of officials from Baltimore's public works, fire and health departments, underscoring the toll of the opioid epidemic on city resources.
A defense attorney said Carter's testimony could continue for up to three days.
Lawyers for McKesson and AmerisourceBergen say cartels, gangs and street crews are to blame for the opioid crisis because they brought heroin and fentanyl to Baltimore and peddled it on street corners here. They argue that their companies merely supply opioids to licensed pharmacies based on the demand created by doctors' prescribing practices.
The U.S. Department of Justice took legal action against McKesson because of what it did at New Care, entering a settlement with the company on May 2, 2008. In addition to paying approximately $13.3 million, the agreement required McKesson to attest that it would create a program to comply with the Controlled Substances Act and report suspicious drug orders to the DEA.
McKesson did not report a suspicious order in the Baltimore area from the time of the settlement until March 2012 — almost four years later.
In opening statements , the city showed an email from a top McKesson official sent shortly after the 2008 settlement agreement. The company regulatory official told employees to "refrain from using the word 'suspicious' in communications" — something that was later codified into a company policy manual.
"McKesson's policy, you're going to see in this case, was 'see something, say nothing, so we don't have to report it,'" Bill Carmody, an attorney for the city, told jurors in openings.
Andrew Stanner, one of McKesson's lawyers, countered in his opening statement that the company began a policy under which it would stop reporting suspicious orders because it would block the orders.
Carter testified that drug companies, under DEA regulations, were not allowed to choose not to report suspicious orders.
This will be updated.
