CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in just six years, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on these two painkillers, according to an investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
That amounts to 433 of the frequently abused opioid pills for every man, woman and child in the state of 1.84 million people.
The Gazette-Mail (http://bit.ly/2hfEa9l ) obtained previously confidential records sent by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to the office of West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. They disclose the number of pills sold to every pharmacy and drug shipments to all 55 counties in West Virginia between 2007 and 2012.
Four of these counties – Wyoming, McDowell, Boone and Mingo – lead the nation in fatal overdoses caused by pain pills, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The records – which leading drug wholesalers had fought in court to keep secret – show the wholesalers shipped ever-higher doses of the pills – a telltale sign of growing addictions – even as the death toll climbed, the newspaper reported on Sunday.