Drilling into the DEA’s pain pill database
By The Washington Post July 16, 2019
The prescription pill crisis was the first wave of an ongoing epidemic that hit rural areas particularly hard in West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Nevada, according to the database.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations...36c862fdd4
For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town and city — is being made public.
The data, detailing nearly 380 million transactions, provides an unprecedented look at the surge of legal pain pills that fueled the prescription opioid epidemic, which resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths from 2006 to 2012.
[76 billion opioid pills: Newly released federal data unmasks the epidemic]
A county-level analysis of the data shows the places most affected by the oxycodone and hydrocodone pills that were distributed across the country over a seven-year period: more than 76 billion in all.
Number of pills distributed per person, per year
Average yearly total, by county, 2006 through 2012
A map of the deaths and shipments reveals a virtual opioid belt of more than 90 counties stretching southwest from Webster County, W.Va., through southern Virginia and ending in Monroe County, Ky.
This swath includes 18 of the top 20 counties ranked by per capita prescription opioid deaths nationwide and 12 of the top 20 counties for opioid pills distributed per capita. In the belt from 2006 through 2012, death rates from opioid abuse were 4.5 times the national average.
The Post analysis shows that the volumes of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. The overall number — 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills shipped over the seven years — eclipsed what was previously known about opioid distribution by orders of magnitude.
By The Washington Post July 16, 2019
The prescription pill crisis was the first wave of an ongoing epidemic that hit rural areas particularly hard in West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Nevada, according to the database.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations...36c862fdd4
For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town and city — is being made public.
The data, detailing nearly 380 million transactions, provides an unprecedented look at the surge of legal pain pills that fueled the prescription opioid epidemic, which resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths from 2006 to 2012.
[76 billion opioid pills: Newly released federal data unmasks the epidemic]
A county-level analysis of the data shows the places most affected by the oxycodone and hydrocodone pills that were distributed across the country over a seven-year period: more than 76 billion in all.
Number of pills distributed per person, per year
Average yearly total, by county, 2006 through 2012
A map of the deaths and shipments reveals a virtual opioid belt of more than 90 counties stretching southwest from Webster County, W.Va., through southern Virginia and ending in Monroe County, Ky.
This swath includes 18 of the top 20 counties ranked by per capita prescription opioid deaths nationwide and 12 of the top 20 counties for opioid pills distributed per capita. In the belt from 2006 through 2012, death rates from opioid abuse were 4.5 times the national average.
The Post analysis shows that the volumes of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. The overall number — 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills shipped over the seven years — eclipsed what was previously known about opioid distribution by orders of magnitude.
