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 Five companies have received subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney's
office in the Eastern District of New York as part of the
investigation: drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd,
Mallinckrodt Plc, Johnson & Johnson and Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc,
and distributor McKesson Corp, regulatory filings showed.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the investigation on Tuesday.
The newspaper said the probe was in the early stages and prosecutors
were expected to subpoena other companies in the coming months,
citing a source.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District
of New York declined to comment.
The WSJ also said distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp had received a
subpoena as part of the investigation. The company said in
regulatory filings that it has received subpoenas from multiple U.S.
attorneys including the Eastern District of New York, but unlike the
other companies, AmerisourceBergen did not specify the nature of the
probe.
Shares of AmerisourceBergen, Amneal, Teva, Mallinckrodt and McKesson
ended down 3% to 9%, while J&J shares were down marginally following
the report. J&J's disclosure of the investigation was reported by
Reuters in October.
Teva said it was confident in its monitoring practices, which it
said were designed to ensure medicines were delivered appropriately.
McKesson referred to recent regulatory filings while the other
companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy chains have been
defending themselves against thousands of lawsuits by state
attorneys general, local governments and class actions accusing them
of fueling an addiction crisis.
Opioids have contributed to more than 400,000 deaths since 1997.
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Some of the companies' filings described the subpoenas as part of an
industry-wide probe into anti-diversion policies and distribution of
opioid medications under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Several companies said they received grand jury subpoenas,
indicating a criminal investigation.
The CSA requires companies to report orders of controlled substances
such as opioids that are unusually large or unusually frequent, or
that substantially deviate from norm.
In July, federal prosecutors charged an Ohio drug distributor,
Miami-Luken Inc, for shipping millions of opioid pills to rural
Appalachia, ground zero for the epidemic.
The company shipped 3.7 million hydrocodone pills from 2008 to 2011
to a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 400 people,
prosecutors said.
In 2016, distributor Cardinal Health Inc agreed to pay $44 million
to resolve allegations it violated the CSA by filling unusually
large orders of oxycodone without reporting them.
Teva, Mallinckrodt and J&J also recently disclosed they had received
subpoenas from the New York State Department of Financial Services.
J&J said it was part of an industry-wide inquiry into the effect of
opioid prescriptions on New York health insurance premiums.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Brendan Pierson in
New York and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva,
Bill Berkrot and Cynthia Osterman)
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