Teva and McCaskill: A Game of Cat and Mouse

In Summer 2017, we wrote about Senator Claire McCaskill’s request to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries that they provide information about the distribution of opioids and its efforts to prevent drug diversion. In her original letter, McCaskill stated, “[t]his epidemic has reportedly arisen, in part, from the failure of opioid distributors to monitor the flow of hundreds of millions of painkillers to pharmacies across the United States and then on to the black market.” In her initial letter, she requested several documents and pieces of information to “aid the Committee in understanding the role of manufacturers and distributors in overseeing opioid shipments and preventing diversion.” Included in that request were: descriptions of any suspicious order monitoring program Teva and its subsidiaries have implemented; copies of any questionnaires (and any responses to same) sent to distributors by Teva and its subsidiaries regarding their anti-diversion and compliance efforts; a list of all suspicious order notifications Teva and its subsidiaries provided to DEA regarding opioid orders originating from Missouri; and a list of all Missouri-based pharmacies, distributors, or other customers for which Teva and its subsidiaries have conducted an audit or investigation. In response, Foley & Lardner, LLP, Teva’s attorneys, sent her a letter essentially telling McCaskill that they were not going to comply with any of her requests. The one response Teva provided through its...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs