
The state of California wants to revoke the wholesale license for a facility run by Cardinal Health, one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical distributors, for failing to note a series of unusual sales of an opioid painkiller and three other tightly regulated medicines to a pharmacy.
Between 2013 and 2015, the Cardinal Health outpost in Valencia, Calif., sold increasingly large quantities of the controlled substances — including Norco, which is a mixture of acetaminophen and hydrocodone — to the pharmacy, which state officials called “red flags.” Another medicine was the Xanax anxiety pill.