The prescription opioid epidemic which now claims more than 60 lives a day in the U.S. and costs our country an estimated $75 billion a year has devastated families and whole communities. It has put unimaginable stress on our public services and state budgets and sent health care costs soaring. For Teamsters, the crisis is personal as so many families have been deeply impacted by the insidious epidemic.

West Virginia, a state of less than 2 million people, has suffered the highest overdose death rate in the U.S. According to a recent investigation by the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail, drug wholesalers flooded the state with 780 million painkillers in just six years as overdose deaths were on the rise. That amounts to 433 pain pills for every man, woman and child. The nation’s three largest prescription drug wholesalers, McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, supplied more than half of all pain pills statewide during this period while reporting a combined $17 billion in net income. Over the past four years, the CEOs of the “Big 3” wholesalers collectively received salaries and other compensation of more than $450 million.

According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the wholesalers repeatedly failed to report suspicious orders as required by law, leading to multiple enforcement actions over the years and some big settlements. McKesson alone has paid more than $160 million to settle cases with the DEA and has had to suspend distribution of certain drugs from some distribution centers. But according to an investigative report by the Washington Post, DEA enforcement appears to have slowed in recent years as the wholesalers began hiring DEA investigators and putting them on their payrolls.

West Virginia has sued the big three wholesalers as have several of the hardest hit counties in the state. Both Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen settled with the state, agreeing to pay $20 million and $16 million, respectively. McKesson has not. West Virginia says that McKesson supplied nearly 100 million doses to the state during a five year period and provided bonuses and commissions to sales representatives based on the sale of highly addictive prescription pain medication. During that same five year period, McKesson CEO John Hammergren received more than $368 million in realizable compensation, demonstrating a startling lack of accountability at the top.

In a November letter to McKesson’s board of directors, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall demanded that McKesson “take immediate, proactive steps to investigate and address company practices that have helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic.”

Hall demands that McKesson recover all or a significant portion of Hammergren’s incentive pay, investigate whether the incentive pay for other top executives should be clawed back, and suspend use of incentive pay related to the sale of controlled substances.

“Unfortunately, I have seen the devastation up close. It has ravaged my home state of West Virginia and impacted hundreds of Teamster families across the country,” Hall said. “We will not let these distributors put profits above the health and safety of Teamster members and their families.”

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