Foulkes Refuses to Respond to Questions About CVS and Her Role in Opioid Crisis - Lawsuits Pile Up
GoLocalProv News Team
Foulkes Refuses to Respond to Questions About CVS and Her Role in Opioid Crisis - Lawsuits Pile Up
But she won’t answer questions about the charges made by Attorney Generals around the country, who claim that under Foulkes' leadership as President of CVS, the company profited off the opioid epidemic.
According to the CDC, the U.S. economic cost of opioid use disorder ($471 billion) and fatal opioid overdose ($550 billion) during 2017 totaled over one trillion dollars.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe Attorney General of Kentucky is one of many who have filed suit against CVS for the company’s role in the opioid epidemic.
“During the height of the opioid epidemic, CVS allowed millions of dosage units of opioids to flood Kentucky’s borders, fueling the crisis and devastating thousands of families and communities across the Commonwealth,” said Cameron. “As both distributor and pharmacy, CVS was in a unique position to monitor and stop the peddling of these highly-addictive drugs from their stores, yet they ignored their own safeguard systems. By bringing this lawsuit on behalf of the people of Kentucky, we are holding CVS accountable for these decisions and for contributing to a man-made crisis that tragically led to the loss of life of thousands of Kentuckians.”
"CVS maintained over 100 separate license numbers in the Commonwealth as a 'wholesaler,' 'out-of-state pharmacy,' and 'retail pharmacy.' Between 2006 and 2014, CVS pharmacies in Kentucky purchased more than 151 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from its own distribution centers and third-party distributors, accounting for nearly 6.1 percent of the total dosage units in the Commonwealth during this time," according to Cameron.
During the time Cameron says CVS was most reckless, it was Foulkes who oversaw the pharmacy function — according to her bio, she served as executive vice president of CVS Health and President of CVS Pharmacy during those years.
“One CVS store, located in Perry County, purchased over 6.8 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from 2006 to 2014, which was enough opioids for every man, woman, and child in the county to have over 26 pills every year during the same period. A CVS in Crittenden County bought over 2.8 million dosage units of the drugs, enough to supply everyone in the county with over 34 pills every year,” according to Cameron.
In the federal lawsuit, Kentucky claims, “CVS played a dual role in creating, fueling, and maintaining the opioid epidemic within Kentucky’s borders — (1) through their retail pharmacies, as dispensers of opioids to the public, and (2) as a wholesale distributor, taking and shipping orders to and from their own pharmacies. Occupying two links in the opioid supply chain, CVS was in a unique and superior position of knowledge with regard to the gross amount of opioids pumped into their stores and poured out onto the streets of Kentucky.”
Foulkes campaign website states, “She held nearly every leadership position, including president of retail where she was responsible for 200,000 employees and eighty billion dollars in revenue.”
The Kentucky lawsuit is just one of a number of suits CVS is facing.
Bloomberg reported, “In July, Rite Aid, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens settled cases brought by two New York counties after the start of a state court trial, filings show. Suffolk County said the companies would pay it a combined $13 million. Nassau County didn’t disclose how much it would receive.”
And a much higher profile case in Ohio is ongoing now. “A CVS Health Corp. executive acknowledged in court that some of the company’s U.S. pharmacies filled illegitimate opioid prescriptions for almost a decade, but he denied any widespread failure to monitor sales of the addictive painkillers. Tom Davis, who oversees safety issues for CVS, told jurors Tuesday in federal court in Cleveland that while the pharmacy chain had settled multiple state and federal probes over opioids between 2008 and 2016, those cases were outliers," reports Bloomberg.
"Ohio is one of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, which has killed almost 500,000 Americans over two decades. Trumbull and Lake counties allege they were flooded with 140 million pills from 2006 to 2012 as pharmacies turned a blind eye to suspicious prescriptions and didn’t make the required good-faith efforts to determine if they were legitimate," Bloomberg reports.
In the Ohio case alone, CVS and the other major pharmacy chains that filled the prescriptions face billions of dollars in potential liability.
After days of requests to Foulkes to answer a series of questions about her role, GoLocal received only a statement from her campaign manager.
The statement by the Foulkes campaign reads, "When Helena worked for CVS, she drove efforts to prevent children and young adults from accessing prescriptions in their homes, worked to identify and stop prescriptions from pill mills, and to stem the widespread over-prescribing of opioids. Helena led her team at CVS to focus on health, which included the bold decision to remove all tobacco products from CVS’s stores. Under her leadership, CVS advocated for legislation in Rhode Island to limit opioid over-prescribing, which passed in 2016. Helena’s experience as a leader who can bring people together to achieve big results is why she is uniquely qualified to serve as Rhode Island’s next governor."
Foulkes refused to answer questions regarding CVS' culpability in the opioid crisis, her role in overseeing the pharmacy function, as well as her existing stock ownership in CVS. A significant judgment against CVS could have an economic impact on Foulkes.