The US is suing Walmart over the opioid crisis. What this means for the stock.

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The United States Department of Justice sued Walmart, claiming that the retail giant played a role in America’s opioid crisis. But there are several reasons why stocks can survive the process.

The DOJ claims that the lack of adequate personnel in the

Walmart

pharmacies and pressure from managers made it possible to handle suspicious orders on a large scale. According to the lawsuit, these decisions, which the DOJ says were motivated by profit, led Walmart to illegally dispense these drugs – a violation of the Controlled Substances Act – and therefore played a role in the opioid crisis.

For its part, Walmart retaliated against the agency. She claims that the lawsuit “invents a legal theory that illegally forces pharmacists to stand between patients and their doctors”, and that pharmacists, in fact, refused to fill “hundreds of thousands” of problematic prescriptions.

The move, and Walmart’s response, is not a big surprise. This fall, Walmart sued the DOJ for clarity about the role of pharmacies and their employees under the law. Walmart shares also didn’t react much to Wednesday morning news, dropping 0.2% to $ 143.88 on a recent check.

The news is certainly not welcome for Walmart. The DOJ alleges that managers pressured pharmacists to fill orders quickly, as the company believed that this service attracted buyers and kept them in stores. The lawsuit also says the company did little to help pharmacists who raised red flags and, in one case, filled out prescriptions from a doctor who was under federal investigation and who refused to answer pharmacists’ questions.

Walmart said it “has always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill” prescriptions.

At the same time, it could have been worse. The DOJ had already considered criminal charges by Walmart, but decided against this route, filing a civil lawsuit. Walmart is also not the only company in the crosshairs. The bankrupt Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, has already pleaded guilty to three federal crimes. Meanwhile, other local governments have sued Walmart, along with their peers

CVS Health

(CVS),

Rite

Aid (RAD) and

Walgreens Boots Alliance

(WBA), for their supposed roles in the crisis.

Ultimately, unless there are more bombs in the process, this is unlikely to affect Walmart’s stock much. The shares have risen more than 21% in the year so far, as the retailer saw a sudden increase in new buyers during the pandemic. Even if Walmart made a deal with the DOJ – as Purdue did earlier this year, for a total of $ 8.34 billion – that would amount to just over 6% of third quarter tax revenue, or 1.5% of the nearly $ 555 billion in revenue this year is expected to fall.

Write to Teresa Rivas at [email protected]