A northern Ohio judge on Wednesday ordered Walmart, Walgreens and CVS pharmacies to pay two Ohio counties $650.6 million for their role in the opioid crisis.

This amount will allow “financing education and prevention programs and reimbursing agencies and organizations for the costs incurred in managing the crisis,” he added.

Walmart announced in a press release its intention to appeal, denouncing a lawsuit “riddled with errors of fact and law.”

red flags

The three US retail giants, which had been massively distributing painkillers in these two counties, were found guilty in November.

Lawyers from two Ohio counties had managed to convince the jury that the massive opiate presence was indeed a public nuisance and that pharmacies had participated in it by ignoring warning signs about suspicious prescriptions for years.

County officials “simply wanted to be compensated for the burden of a drug epidemic sustained by the corporate greed, negligence and lack of accountability of these drug chains,” their attorney, Mark Lanier, said in the statement.

financial payments

Pharmacy chains believe that pharmacists are simply fulfilling legal prescriptions written by doctors, who prescribe substances approved by health authorities.

Some parties had reached agreements with Lake and Trumbull counties to end the lawsuits in exchange for financial payments. This is the case of the drugstore chains Rite Aid and Giant Eagle.

It was the first time that drug distributors, and not producers, were held responsible for this health crisis, which has caused more than 500,000 overdose deaths in 20 years in the United States, and which has led to endless procedures initiated by the communities.

However, the conviction of opiate producers under the disorderly persons laws has suffered setbacks in California and Oklahoma.

Last summer, CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid and Walmart agreed to pay a total of $26 million to two New York state counties.