EPIDEMIC

Pharma Exec on Opioid Crisis: ‘Deeply Sorry’ We Didn't Move Faster

Former and current executives of pharmaceutical distributors are testifying in front of Congress Tuesday.

Pharmaceutical executives are getting grilled for flooding small towns in America with opioids during a Congressional hearing Tuesday. Former and current leadership of McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith are expected to be questioned by the House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight panel on their role in the opioid crisis. “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish we had moved faster and asked a different set of questions,” Cardinal Health executive chairman George Barrett wrote in his testimony released Monday. “I am deeply sorry we did not.” The subcommittee has spent the past year investigating the rise of opioid use in West Virginia, and found that Cardinal Health and McKesson sent 12.3 million doses of opioids to one West Virginia pharmacy between 2006 and 2014.