How a Florida grocery chain became a major opioid distributor

A new investigative report from the Tampa Bay Times and KFF Health News shows how Publix Super Markets Inc. became a major player in Florida’s opioid distribution game. The report documents how even as the “volume of prescription opioids dispensed in Florida fell 56% from 2011 to 2019 as the pharmaceutical industry was hit by lawsuits for its role in the national opioid crisis,” Publix’s opioid orders and drug sales were increasing exponentially.

The deposition of a Teva Pharmaceuticals executive in a federal lawsuit against Publix and other companies exposed what he called “serious red flags” in regards to Publix’s opioid orders. One flag was that grocery chain’s sales climbed at a rate far exceeding the pharmaceutical company’s expansion into the market. Publix became the second-largest dispenser of opioid medications in 2019, with the largest being CVS. The second flag was Publix’s disproportionately high rate of dispensing “30-milligram instant release oxycodone pills.” The executive’s deposition “compared that with the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, where cancer patients were mostly being prescribed 5 mg instant-release pills.”