Profit continues to be revealed as a driving force in the Big Pharma conglomerate. 

     Last week a Big Pharma consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, agreed to pay $650 million as a  settlement with the U.S. Justice Department so as to avoid their criminal prosecution for helping boost Purdue Pharma’s sales of its addictive opioid, OxyContin.

     This week the U. S. Justice Department released its civil complaint against CVS alleging their complicity in filling unlawful prescriptions of opioids and “trinity” prescriptions (a dangerous combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine and a muscle relaxant).

     These two cases illustrate new legal forays by the Justice Department into those ancillary industries that have helped Big Pharma roll out death and addiction to so many unsuspecting users of their dangerous pharmaceutical concoctions.

     Opioids have been linked to 80,000 deaths per year, and in the early years of their distribution to the public most of these fatalities were from legal prescriptions. Since then drug makers and distributors have paid nearly $50 billion in settlements with governments to atone for their unethical and illegal practices in pushing these drugs.

     The net of justice is now expanding further as pharmaceutical consulting firms like McKinsey and Company and  pharmaceutical distribution centers such as CVS’s nine thousand pharmacies are coming into the sights of these Justice Department big guns.

     McKinsey has acknowledged its guilt in contributing to the opioid crisis and has agreed for the next five years not to work for the sale, marketing, or promotion of controlled substances. The firm’s senior partner, Martin Elling, has also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice after it was discovered he had deleted relevant files from his computer about his business relations with Purdue Pharma.

     “We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma,” a company spokesperson said.

     CVS, on the other hand, is still protesting the current Justice Department accusations.

     “We will defend ourselves vigorously against this misguided federal lawsuit,” Amy Thibault, external communications director for CVS, wrote in a statement.

     According to the Justice Department complaint, CVS ignored substantial  evidence from its own pharmacists as well as from other internal and external data and sources that its pharmacies were dispensing controlled substance  prescriptions without any medical purpose from known “pill mill” prescribers.

     The Justice Department complaint also alleges that CVS sought reimbursement from federal health care programs for these  prescriptions, which is a violation of the U.S. False Claims Act.

     “Each of the  prescriptions in question was for an FDA-approved opioid medication,” CVS’s Amy Thibault went on to say, and it was “prescribed by a practitioner who the government itself licensed, authorized, and empowered to write controlled-substance prescriptions.”

     Yes, that’s right, Amy, and these guys are even more birds of a Big Pharma feather.