(Reuters) -Kroger has agreed to pay $110 million to resolve a lawsuit by the state of Kentucky alleging the supermarket chain's pharmacies helped fuel a deadly opioid epidemic by flooding its communities with hundreds of millions of doses of addictive painkillers.

The suit alleged Kroger bought more than four billion morphine milligram equivalents of opioids for Kentucky between 2006 and 2019, roughly equivalent to 444 million opioid doses. The company distributed almost 194 million hydrocodone pills to its Kentucky pharmacies between 2006 and 2019,

The Kroger Co. has agreed to pay Kentucky $110 million to settle a lawsuit filed last year alleging it pumped millions of doses of opioids into the state over the course of more than a decade. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (R) announced the settlement Thursday,