Shepherdsville, a city of about 12,000 people in Bullitt County, has been named the drug smuggling capital of Kentucky by the state’s attorney general. The city, located 20 miles south of Louisville, is the site of a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Russell Coleman against Kroger Co., one of the nation’s largest grocery chains, for allegedly contributing to the opioid crisis in the state.
Kroger accused of flooding Kentucky with opioids
The lawsuit, filed on Monday, February 12, 2024, claims that Kroger’s more than 100 Kentucky pharmacies were responsible for over 11% of all opioid pills dispensed in the state between 2006 and 2019. It amounted to hundreds of millions of doses inundating Kentucky communities without reasonable safeguards, the suit said.
“For more than a decade, Kroger flooded Kentucky with an almost unthinkable number of opioid pills that directly led to addiction, pain and death,” Coleman said in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges that Kroger failed to implement any effective monitoring program to stop suspicious opioid orders, and that it ignored red flags such as unusually large or frequent prescriptions, customers paying in cash, and prescriptions from out-of-state or distant doctors. The suit also accuses Kroger of violating the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act by engaging in unfair, false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of its pharmacy business.
The suit is seeking civil penalties of $2,000 against the grocery chain for each alleged willful violation of the act, as well as injunctive relief, restitution, and attorney fees and costs.
Kentucky among the hardest hit by the overdose crisis
Kentucky has been one of the states most affected by the nation’s overdose crisis, and a series of Kentucky attorneys general from both political parties — including now-Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat — aggressively pursued legal action against companies that make or distribute opioid-based medication.
Overdose fatalities in Kentucky surpassed 2,000 again in 2022 but were down from the prior year, Beshear said in a 2023 announcement. Increased use of fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid — is blamed as a key factor behind the state’s chronically high overdose death toll.
The new lawsuit against Kroger is part of Coleman’s ongoing efforts to hold accountable those who contributed to the opioid epidemic in Kentucky. Coleman, a Republican who took office at the start of this year, has also filed lawsuits against other major opioid distributors, such as Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson, as well as opioid manufacturers, such as Purdue Pharma, Endo, and Mallinckrodt.
Conclusion
Shepherdsville, a small city in Kentucky, has been named the drug smuggling capital of the state by the attorney general, who filed a lawsuit against Kroger for allegedly flooding the state with opioids. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by the state to combat the opioid crisis, which has claimed thousands of lives in Kentucky. The lawsuit seeks to hold Kroger accountable for its role in the epidemic, and to recover damages for the harm caused to the state and its citizens.