Opioid distribution database shows rural counties inundated with legal pain pills from 2006-2012; see county-level data - Entrepreneur Generations

Washington Post map; click the image to enlarge it or click here to view the interactive version.

Between 2006 and 2012, pharmaceutical companies distributed 76 billion prescription pain pills, "enough pills to supply every adult and child in the country with 36 each year," Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich report for the Post. But rural counties, especially in Appalachia, received some of the highest shares of pain pills per person.

That's according to a Drug Enforcement Administration database, made public for the first time, that tracks the path of every pain pill sold in the U.S. County-level data shows the places that received the most pills, fueling the prescription opioid epidemic that resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths in that time period, The Washington Post reports.

"The states that received the highest concentrations of pills per person per year were: West Virginia with 66.5, Kentucky with 63.3, South Carolina with 58, Tennessee with 57.7 and Nevada with 54.7. West Virginia also had the highest opioid death rate during this period," Higham, Horwitz and Rich report. "Rural areas were hit particularly hard: Norton, Va., with 306 pills per person; Martinsville, Va., with 242; Mingo County, W.Va., with 203; and Perry County, Ky., with 175."

Nearly half of the pills were distributed by three companies: McKesson, Walgreens, and Cardinal Health. Mallinckrodt's SpecGx was the leading manufacturer with nearly 38% of the market.

Because the database is partly comprised of pharmaceutical company data supplied to the DEA, it shows what drug companies knew about the number of pills they were shipping at the epidemic's peak, Higham, Horwitz and Rich report. Drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies must log and report each narcotic transaction, and are supposed to report suspiciously large or frequent orders to the DEA and withhold such shipments.

But nearly 2,000 communities, counties and tribes have alleged in federal lawsuits that the drug companies filled suspicious orders and did not report them in order to maximize profits. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, which is now larger in scope than the tobacco lawsuit in the 1980s, Higham, Horwitz and Rich report.

The database was released Monday after the Post and HD Media, which publishes the Charleston Gazette-Mail, won a years-long legal battle to access documents and data from the ongoing litigation. The DEA, Justice Department, and drug companies all fought hard against it. The companies said the database would reveal data that could give competitors an unfair advantage, and the Justice Department said the information could compromise ongoing DEA investigations, Higham, Horwitz and Rich report.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/30yA42f Opioid distribution database shows rural counties inundated with legal pain pills from 2006-2012; see county-level data - Entrepreneur Generations

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