Drug firms shipped 20.8M pain pills to West Virginia town with 2,900 people
Over the past decade, out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people, according to a congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the massive shipments of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — to the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, amid the panel’s inquiry into the role of drug distributors in the opioid epidemic.
“These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” said committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., in a joint statement.
The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn’t flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia.
Read more: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-firms-shipped-m-pain-pills-to-wv-town-with/article_ef04190c-1763-5a0c-a77a-7da0ff06455b.html
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that comes to approximately 20 pills per day per person over 365 days a year for every man, woman and child in that town. We all know that's impossible, so this stuff is being scripted out over a large area and into multiple states.
Similar number were shown for some other towns and counties in the state.
(snip - from article)
"The state has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation. More than 880 people fatally overdosed in West Virginia in 2016.
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One part of the article that almost makes me ill is the fact that the distributors involved have been fined a couple of times, but the fines are just peanuts compared to the revenue they've made with these sales.
This probably is also a sign of the economic destitution these ex-coal mining areas are suffering.
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