Arkansas will receive more than $2.8 million from a multistate settlement with a drug distributor that pleaded guilty last year to illegally distributing misbranded drugs, state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced Wednesday.
An Alabama pharmacy owned by Pennsylvania-based AmerisourceBergen was accused of emptying sealed, prefilled vials of cancer drugs, pooling the drug and repackaging it in plastic syringes, allowing it to profit from the "overfill," or excess amounts of drugs, contained in the vials, according to a news release from Rutledge's office.
The syringes were filled in an unsterile environment and often contained particles of foreign matter, the release says.
AmerisourceBergen agreed to pay $260 million last year to resolve its criminal liability for distributing the drugs from a facility that was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
The money going to Arkansas comes from $625 million that the company agreed to pay to settle its liability for distributing the misbranded drugs to government health care programs, such as state Medicaid programs, according to Rutledge's release.
Metro on 11/22/2018