Former DEA agent testifies against drug distributors in Baltimore opioid case: ‘Outrageous amount of hydrocodone’

In October 2005, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent contacted drug distributor McKesson and said the federal agency would be sending a subpoena for sales records of the drug to an East Baltimore Internet pharmacy.

In the 11 months before McKesson fired New Care Pharmacy as a customer — and while the DEA continued to investigate the pharmacy — the company sent it 3 million hydrocodone opioid painkillers, a retired DEA agent testified in Baltimore court Tuesday.

“That’s a huge amount of hydrocodone to send to a pharmacy,” former federal investigator Ruth Carter told the jury 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 opioid orders and to report such orders to the DEA, its legal obligation under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The pharmacy owners were convicted in federal court and each sentenced to five years in prison in 2009 for illegally selling hydrocodone.

“There was no due diligence, in my opinion,” Carter said of McKesson’s oversight of New Care. “They had clear red flags in this case.”

Carter is the city’s first expert witness to testify in support of allegations that McKesson and AmerisourceBergen flooded the Baltimore area with hundreds of millions in painkillers between 2006 and 2009, willfully ignoring the havoc the opioids would wreak.

Advocates in the city say the influx of prescription opioids has created a new generation of addicts, who have died in unprecedented numbers as their prescriptions run out and they turn to an illegal drug market flooded with deadly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

In its 2018 lawsuit, the city alleged 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 drugmakers and pharmacy chains have already settled with the city for at least $402.5 million.

Carter’s testimony Tuesday followed that of officials from Baltimore’s public works, fire and health departments, and underscored the toll the opioid epidemic is taking on the city’s resources.

According to a defense attorney, Carter’s testimony could last as long as three days.

Lawyers for McKesson and AmerisourceBergen say cartels, gangs and street gangs are to blame for the opioid crisis by bringing heroin and fentanyl into Baltimore and selling it on street corners here. They allege their companies only supply opioids to licensed pharmacies based on demand created by doctors’ prescribing practices.

The U.S. Department of Justice took legal action against McKesson over its actions at New Care and reached a settlement with the company on May 2, 2008. In addition to paying approximately $13.3 million, the agreement required McKesson to certify that it would establish 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, nearly four years later.

In opening statements, the city produced an email from a top McKesson executive sent shortly after the 2008 settlement agreement. The company’s supervisor told employees “not to use the word ‘suspicious’ in communications” — something that was later codified in a company policy handbook.

“McKesson’s policy, as you will see in this case, was ‘if you see something, don’t say anything so we don’t have to report it,’” Bill Carmody, an attorney for the city, told jurors during the opening session.

Andrew Stanner, one of McKesson’s attorneys, countered in his opening statement that the company had started a policy of no longer reporting suspicious orders because it would block the orders.

Carter testified that under DEA rules, pharmaceutical companies did not have the choice not to report suspicious orders.

This article is being updated.