Walgreen’s was founded in 1901 in Chicago, a single store, owned by Charles Walgreen. It was never related to Walmart. By the onset of the Roaring Twenties, Walgreen’s was a chain with dozens of stores throughout the Midwest, primarily because it was selling alcohol during Prohibition. Today there are over 9,200 Walgreen’s stores in the U.S.
Since the onset of the current century, Walgreen’s settled a discrimination lawsuit against Black employees with a $24 million payment (2008) followed by a $35 million payment in a suit that exposed the company for switching dosage forms on three medications without doctor approvals in order to boost profits (2008). Also in 2008, Walgreen’s paid another $35 million for overcharging state Medicaid programs by filling prescriptions with more expensive dosage forms of ranitidine, a generic form of Zantac, and fluoxetine, a generic form of Prozac.” Two years later, Walgreen’s stopped accepting Medicaid in Washington state leaving its one million Medicaid recipients unable to get their prescriptions filled at their 121 stores. Walgreen’s keeps being sued— often successfully— for overfilling Medicare and Medicaid. The last time was in 2019, when the company paid a fine of over a quarter billion dollars for cheating. But the law suit that got the most public attention was for Walgreen’s predatory role in the opioid crisis, acting as classic drug pushers of oxycodone. They paid a $683 million fine. OK, to put it mildly, Walgreen’s has been a very bad corporate actor, with everything from wage theft violations to selling expired products, over-charging both customers and Medicare and continuing to push opioids.
So what is this bad corporate citizen— the nation’s second biggest pharmacy chain— up to today? Yesterday, the company confirmed that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states (Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana) where they remain legal— acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists. Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company began distributing the drugs, which have become the nation’s most popular method for ending a pregnancy.
The Biden administration moved in January to allow retail pharmacies to dispense the pills— part of a broader push to preserve and expand access to abortion as more states passed bans on the procedure. That decision followed a multiyear analysis by the FDA that found the pills were safe and effective to use without a doctor’s visit, a conclusion state attorneys general and anti-abortion groups are challenging in court.
Following the release of the FDA’s analysis, several chain pharmacies swiftly announced they would participate, but only in states that hadn’t banned or restricted access to the pills.
The group of Republican attorneys general, who argue that the Biden administration is misinterpreting the laws around mailing and dispensing abortion pills, also wrote to CVS, Albertsons, Rite Aid, Costco, Walmart and Kroger demanding they, too, refuse to dispense the medication.
The six companies did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s questions about their plans in those states.
Though some independent and online pharmacies say they will seek certification to provide the drugs in these states, advocates warn that the impact of Walgreens’ decision could significantly limit access.
“They’re denying people agency over their lives,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy expert with the abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute. “When we’re thinking about states that have a lot of their population in rural areas, it’s much more likely that a pharmacy is nearby than a provider’s office, so these pharmacies play an outsized role in patient health and access to health care.”
Walgreens and its top executives have contributed over $2 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside campaign groups since the 2010 election cycle. The majority of these contributions have gone to Republican candidates and groups. The biggest recipients have been Mitt Romney (R-UT), Jeb Bush (R-FL), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Rick Scott (R-FL), which is interesting considering that Walgreen’s criminality has been most pronounced in Ohio and Florida andthese contributions smack of protection money.