Morris & Dickson Co., one of the nation's largest drug distributors, has lost its license to sell highly addictive painkillers after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration determined it failed to flag thousands of suspicious orders at the height of the opioid crisis.
The action followed an Associated Press investigation that found that the DEA allowed the company to continue shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended the harshest penalty for its "cavalier disregard" of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse. The DEA acknowledged that the time it took to issue its final decision was "longer than typical for the agency" but blamed Morris & Dickson in part for holding up the process by seeking delays because of the pandemic and its lengthy pursuit of a settlement that the agency said it had considered.
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DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the distributor failed to accept full responsibility for its past actions, which included shipping 12,000 unusually large orders of opioids to pharmacies and hospitals between 2014 and 2018. During this time, the company filed just three suspicious order reports with the agency. Milgram specifically cited testimony of then-president Paul Dickson Sr. in 2019 that the company's compliance program was "dang good" and he didn't think a "single person has gotten hurt by (their) drugs."
"Those statements from the president of a family-owned-and-operated company so strongly miss the point of the requirements of a DEA registrant," she wrote. "Its acceptance of responsibility did not prove that it or its principals understand the full extent of their wrongdoing … and the potential harm it caused."
Morris & Dickson, based in Shreveport, La., is the nation's fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, with $4 billion in annual revenues and nearly 600 employees serving pharmacies and hospitals in 29 states. In a statement, the company said it has invested millions of dollars over the past few years to revamp its compliance systems and appeared to hold out hope for a settlement.
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"Morris & Dickson is grateful to the DEA administrator for delaying the effective date of the order to allow time to settle these old issues," it said. "We remain confident we can achieve an outcome that safeguards the supply chain for all of our health-care partners and the communities they serve. Business will continue as usual, and orders will continue to go out on time."
Morris & Dickson's larger competitors, a trio of pharmaceutical distributors known as the Big Three, already have agreed to pay the federal government more than $1 billion in fines and penalties to settle similar violations. Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson also agreed to pay $21 billion over 18 years to resolve claims as part of a nationwide settlement.
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Alan Goforth
Alan Goforth is a freelance writer in suburban Kansas City. In addition to freelancing for several publications, he has written a dozen books about sports and other topics.
