MORRIS & DICKSON ENTERS CIVIL SETTLEMENT

On May 24 Morris & Dickson entered into an agreement with the US Department of Justice that settles our civil case. We reached this settlement so that we can focus on continuing to dependably deliver life-saving medications to hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare facilities.

Despite working in a highly regulated industry for 178 years, our company has never before received a significant fine, citation, or penalty. For almost two centuries we have worked to improve our systems, and we are working even harder to reduce the possibility of medicine ending up in the wrong hands. As the agreement states clearly, while the settlement is “not an admission of liability” everyone involved wanted “to avoid delay, expense, inconvenience, and uncertainty.”

We share the goal of preventing diversion of controlled substances with the DEA and stand ready to work with it to meet these shared goals. As part of our efforts we’ll continue to work collaboratively with state and national officials to reveal those that would abuse the system so we can stop it in real time.

Frankly, for us and many others it has been a constant scramble to stay ahead of this fast-moving crisis. The rules, regulations, and best-practices are evolving rapidly as we all work to contain the epidemic.

Our family business has extraordinarily deep roots in our community, and we’ve all had friends, relatives, and neighbors personally impacted by the crisis. This only strengthens our commitment to do absolutely everything we can to confront the challenge. The opioid crisis is real, and we unequivocally accept our responsibility to do everything in our control as a distributor to prevent misuse – while also protecting deserving patients’ ability to receive the doctor-prescribed medications they absolutely need. At every step, we are doing the very best we can under these difficult circumstances. We strive to follow each and every best practice, while providing our customers, employees, business partners, and their patients with the stability and dependability they’ve come to expect in our 178 years of doing business.

Those who know us best know how seriously the M&D family is committed to maintaining our well-earned reputation as a stable and ethical business. We’ve evolved quite a bit since our founding in 1841, integrating state-of-the-art systems and consistently updating our quality control measures, and we’ll continue to make improvements.