Now, for the first time, federal authorities are bringing the same kind of felony drug-trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor and two of its former executives for their role in fanning the crisis.
The government’s novel tactic was expected to reverberate through the pharmaceutical industry, where large corporations and senior executives have long escaped criminal culpability for the epidemic of overdoses from prescription painkillers, like oxycodone.
The company, Rochester Drug Cooperative, or RDC, was charged Tuesday in federal court with conspiring to distribute drugs and defrauding the government.
But it entered into an agreement under which the government will hold off on prosecuting the company itself on the charges as long as it pays a $20 million fine, complies with the controlled substances law and submits to five years of supervision by an independent monitor.
As part of the agreement, the company, the nation’s sixth-largest distributor, admitted in court papers that it intentionally violated federal narcotics laws by shipping dangerous, highly addictive opioids to pharmacies, knowing that the prescription medicines were being sold and used illicitly.
The two former company officials were also charged with conspiring to distribute drugs and defrauding the government. One of the former executives pleaded guilty last week and is cooperating with prosecutors; the other was expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to face the charges later Tuesday.
“This prosecution is the first of its kind,” said Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. “Our office will do everything in its power to combat this epidemic, from street-level dealers to the executives who illegally distribute drugs from their boardrooms.”
The charges stem from a two-year Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that began after the company violated the terms of a civil settlement. The company had admitted in the civil case that it had for years failed to report thousands of suspicious opioid orders from pharmacies, many of which flouted order limits and catered to doctors who ran pill mills.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.