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Doctors and other healthcare practitioners who write prescriptions bear ultimate responsibility for improper distribution of opioids to patients, not pharmacists who are obliged to fill those prescriptions, a series of pharmacy chains argued in federal court. The filings, which were submitted Monday to the federal judge in Cleveland who has been overseeing the national opioid lawsuits, asked the judge to rule in the pharmacies' favor and reject claims brought by some Ohio counties. The judge has scheduled an October trial for claims against CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, HBC and Discount Drug Mart. (Welsh-Huggins, 1/7)

“In a misguided hunt for deep pockets, without regard to actual fault or liability, plaintiff has elected not to sue any of these other parties,” attorneys for drugstore chains said in the papers. Drug manufacturers and distributors agreed or were ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and one court verdict reached in state and federal courts last year. But the big pharmacy chains have not been held liable so far. (Bernstein, 1/7)

“We the pharmacies just fill the prescriptions,” said Timothy Johnson, an attorney for Discount Drug Mart. “While certainly we have a limited role in making sure it’s a legitimate prescription, not stolen or forged or whatever, to the extent we can, we do that. “The pharmacist is not supposed to be second guessing the medical necessity of the doctor’s prescription.” (Heisig, 1/7)

Dan Cook, an oral surgeon based in Denver, N.C., used to send patients whose wisdom teeth he had just pulled out the door with prescriptions for opioid pain medication to last four days. That added up to about 21 pills per patient, Cook told media crews gathered several weeks ago in the lobby of a south Charlotte Carolinas Center for Oral & Facial Surgery. ...Now as dentists in this state join other health care providers squaring off against the deadly opioid epidemic, they’re looking for different ways to help patients manage pain after wisdom teeth extractions and other oral surgeries. (Blythe, 1/8)

Drug overdose data is greatly underreported in nationwide statistics, a researcher at the University of South Florida has found. Troy Quast, an associate professor at the USF College of Public Health, found that data related to overdose deaths vary significantly from state to state, masking the size of the crisis. Overdoses are a “bigger problem” than federal statistics make them appear, he said. (Griffin, 1/8)

It will likely take another five to 10 years before new pain medicines that could replace today’s opioids could reach the market, said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That’s the best-case scenario, Volkow told POLITICO in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday. It assumes that medicines that drugmakers already have in phase two and three clinical trials prove to be safe and effective and get FDA approval in five to eight years. (Owermohle and Karlin-Smith, 1/7)