Cardinal Health, a Fortune 500 drug distribution company accused by the Drug Enforcement Administration of selling excessive amounts of prescription painkillers to Florida pharmacies, must stop shipping drugs from its Lakeland, Fla., distribution center, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled Wednesday.
The ruling lifts a temporary restraining order that prevented the DEA from enforcing its Feb. 2 suspension of Cardinal's license to distribute controlled substances from the Florida facility.
Companies that hold such licenses are obligated to police themselves and take steps when they see signs that the drugs are being diverted to an illegal market, Walton said.
The DEA says the Lakeland distribution center posed a danger to public health. A DEA investigation found Cardinal shipped 50 times as much oxycodone to its four top pharmacies in Florida as to its other retail customers. In 2011, a CVS pharmacy in Sanford, Fla., purchased 1.8 million pills from Cardinal, DEA records show.
An average U.S. pharmacy dispenses 69,000 a year, the DEA said.
The amounts "were astounding -- far above what I would expect from pharmacies of similar size in a city such as Sanford, Florida," DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said in a sworn statement.
Cardinal said in a written statement it would appeal the ruling. Suspension without a hearing violates its due-process rights and discounts the steps the company has taken to curtail diversion, Cardinal attorney Randy Moss said.
"We have demonstrated a deep commitment in helping fight prescription drug abuse," the statement said. Cardinal has spent millions to build a system to detect diversion and has cut off hundreds of DEA-licensed pharmacies it suspects may divert the drugs, the statement said.
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