Albertson’s is not the first or only corp that Washington State has sued over the opioid crisis. Going after prescribers and going after corps aren’t mutually exclusive.

Albertsons filled prescriptions more than 6.5 million times without showing that pharmacists had confirmed doctors wrote them for legitimate medical purposes, according to the state. 

This led to them being diverted for illicit use as an epidemic roared across Washington, and the nation. Here, opioid overdoses have claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Pharmacists are legally required to identify drug diversion and report suspicious orders to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to the state. Brown said company policies “actively discouraged” pharmacists from doing their due diligence.

As examples of this diversion, the state cited cases of Albertsons pharmacies dispensing thousands of pills to single customers. In one month, a customer at a Kent pharmacy got over 5,000 opioid pills, for example. 

At one store, a family medicine doctor accounted for 60% of all the oxycodone dispensed, an attorney for the state said at trial. The company, in some cases, didn’t allow pharmacists to decline to fill prescriptions from these “pill mill” doctors, unlike other pharmacies. One store reportedly filled prescriptions for someone known to sell his drugs.

Store employees also stole pills, according to the state. A Safeway employee in North Bend reportedly  swiped more than 70,000 opioid pills over two years before getting caught. The store agreed in 2017 to temporarily suspend filling controlled substance prescriptions after an investigation found the store hadn’t notified the DEA of the missing hydrocodone tablets until months after Safeway learned of the pilfering. The inquiry found a widespread practice of Safeway failing to report missing or stolen pills. Safeway agreed to pay $3 million in that case.

Other thefts include 12,000 pills from a Leavenworth pharmacy and 19,000 in Olympia. This was due to lackluster tracking of its inventory of controlled substances, Brown argued.

Stores were chronically understaffed, leading to overworked pharmacy employees. This made it “impossible” to review prescriptions to ensure they were above board, according to evidence presented during the lengthy trial. One pharmacist warned the company that, due to these conditions, “mistakes can easily be made to put someone’s life at risk,” according to the attorney general’s office.

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Don't really want to defend a corporation, but isn't their excuse legit? Should it really be on them to investigate the prescribers? I feel like the punishment should be focused more on the pseudo-doctors that prescribed that shit in the first place.

There should be so many people imprisoned for life for causing this. Just inhumane levels of fucking depraved.

I love that punishment is happening. I hate that this is going to make groceries even more expensive.

Washington has our own anti-discrimination laws on the books that this initiative probably runs afoul.

I hope someone can find a good angle for a challenge. SCOTUS already ruled that similar laws in other states don't violate Title IX or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, so those avenues are out.

I’m most familiar with soccer, and girls will not need to start a new league to avoid I-638. Leagues like ECNL already exist and operate at a much higher level than school-sponsored soccer, and are not subject to the eligibility requirements the law prescribes.

I don't foresee this one ever being enacted into law, as it's pretty clearly a violation of equal protections under the law based on sex, not least because it focuses on trans girls and ignores trans boys, but it still sucks because trans folks still see that, independent of other views, Washingtonians have expressed intolerance towards them. Pretty telling when you look at the vote per county how this broke down -- Seattle is overwhelmingly welcoming and more rural parts of the state are intolerant.

In a night of mostly happy news, this was a huge bummer (to say the least).. I don't think it's been called for sure, but it's definitely facing an uphill battle. I think it's going to be up to the courts at this point.

When this shit goes airborne, millions will die in the states, while other countries have a vaccine.

Stay safe up there

Oof, that's sad. My heart goes out to this person's family.

33 herds seems like a lot? Is it? We had another person die of avian flu last year if my memory serves me right.

This is the first person in the United States to die from complications from bird flu this year, according to the Associated Press. It comes as officials in Yakima county have reported that since early October, 33 dairy herds have tested positive for “highly pathogenic avian influenza”.

The Yakima health district has said that it, in coordination with the Washington state department of health, is monitoring human cases of bird flu in Yakima county. So far, the district has recorded three confirmed human cases in the county.

In Sunday’s statement, the health district announced the county’s third confirmed human case of bird flu. The individual was “exposed to infected dairy cattle at a Yakima county dairy”, but has not experienced severe illness or required hospitalization.

So much of American political theory is based on the assumption that legislators would never willingly concede power, and I find it puzzling how rarely that assumption holds

The only way to depoliticize Washington’s courts is to return control over tax policy to the legislature. In 1933, five Washington Supreme Court justices seized control of taxation, delivering a political win for their wealthy supporters by overturning a popular income tax. That initial political decision created an unjust, unpredictable tax system and subsequently forced the Court to intervene in everything from school policy to capital gains taxation.

I hope this lets the officers fists heal from the detainees continuous headbutting of them

Ah yes, "appears". Who knows, the video of him punching a downed person could have just been an illusion caused by a wizard.

Let me fix that headline for you:

Auburn police officer suspended with pay, but not arrested, for repeatedly punching helpless detainee in the head on video.

He be back punching civilians in no time.maybe a different state but he will do it again.

The video made me sick to my stomach this morning. I'm glad the outrage forced Auburn PD to put this guy on administrative leave - initially they weren't going to do anything.

Without access to those state records, proving someone illegally voted will be a difficult and labor-intensive process, Floyd said.

The state already validates if you're a citizen. But GOP voters don't know that.

No no no, what really happened is their teammates realised that they were bigger, faster, and stronger than them. So because they couldn't be the best they lost all appreciation of having fun, teamwork, and sportsmanship. This caused all the girls to quit and become hooked on drugs. This is what transgenders do to women's sports! /s

🤣🤣🤣 there’s so much damn money in this state; Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing are all from here; we just don’t tax corporations enough

How is Brian Heywood supposed to make little girls undergo traumatizing genital checks when we have coaches with actual experience like this saying to vote no?!

Shocking!

It's just that easy

A few years ago, when a parent asked me to be aware that her child was transgender, I politely said, ok, thanks and checked with the athlete to see which division they preferred to run in and to make sure I used the right name and pronoun. Beyond that, nothing else changed. That child did the same workouts, chased the same stopwatch times and carried the same expectations to contribute to the team culture like everyone else.

Ballots in Kitsap were sent on the 9th, if you haven't got yours yet, you should print one online on https://votewa.gov.

It felt great to vote against all three of Brian Heywood's terrible initiatives.