Walmart will pay $50 million to settle claims that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious opioid prescriptions, contributing to the national drug abuse crisis, the Justice Department announced on Friday. Government lawyers alleged in 2020 that Walmart, the largest retailer in the country, failed to detect and report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Court records show that over an approximately four-year period, Walmart shipped an estimated 37.5 million controlled-substance orders to its pharmacies but reported only 204 suspicious orders to the D.

E. A. A Walmart spokeswoman said the company was pleased to resolve the case.

The settlement is part of the government’s broader effort to hold companies accountable for their roles in the opioid epidemic, which has caused approximately 806,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2023. In 2022, Walmart agreed to distribute $3.1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits from local governments and tribes. Kroger, a grocery chain, agreed in 2023 to pay $1.2 billion to settle similar claims.

The federal lawsuit cited instances where employees filled illegitimate prescriptions, including over 3,500 for a doctor flagged as “shady” by Florida pharmacists who observed patients slurring their words and showing signs of narcotic abuse. The settlement requires Walmart to create a hotline for reporting suspected illegal dispensing and to monitor pharmacy dispensing patterns.