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1.9 billion opioid pills sold to Illinois pharmacies and physicians between 2006 and 2012

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Illinois

* AP…

The maker of OxyContin has been cast as the chief villain in the nation’s opioid crisis. But newly released government figures suggest Purdue Pharma had plenty of help in flooding the U.S. with billions of pills even as overdose deaths were accelerating.

Records kept by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration show that 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills — the vast majority of them generics, not brand names — were shipped to U.S. pharmacies from 2006 to 2012.

The annual number swelled by more than 50 percent during that period of time even as the body count climbed. The powerful painkillers flowed faster even after Purdue Pharma was fined $635 million for falsely marketing OxyContin as less addictive than other opioids. […]

The Washington Post, which along with HD Media, the owner of newspapers in West Virginia, went to court to seek the information, was first to publish the data.

* Jayme Fraser at GateHouse Media…

The database, which The Washington Post released publicly last week, details 380 million times between 2006 and 2012 that manufacturers sold opioids to pharmacies, physicians or other distributors — including shipments of more than 1.9 billion pills to Illinois alone. […]

In Sangamon County, 4.3 million [oxycodone and hydrocodone] pain pills were sent to pharmacies and physicians in 2006 and reached almost 9.4 million in 2011 before dipping the next year to just more than 9 million, a GateHouse Media analysis of the data shows. Another 4.1 million pills were shipped to the surrounding area — Cass, Christian, Logan, Macoupin, Menard, Montgomery and Morgan counties — in 2006. The tally for that area had almost doubled by 2012.

The shipments averaged out to 35 pills per person each year in Sangamon County, with similar rates in Christian, Montgomery and Morgan counties. The rest were lower: 29 in Logan, 26 in Macoupin, 14 in Cass and 11 in Menard. That compares to the national annual average of 37 pills per person and the state average of 30.

The rates varied greatly in Illinois: Scott and Stark counties were shipped fewer than 5 pills per person while Hardin and Saline received more than 85 pills per person The top ten counties in the United States all saw annual rates of more than 155 pills per person.

* CBS 2…

In Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, more than 218 million pills were distributed. But no corner of Illinois was spared, the data shows. From Chicago to tiny communities interspersed between miles of rural land, millions of doses of the heroin-like drugs were bought and sold.

In Rockford, with its population of about 150,000: 53 million doses. In Springfield, the state’s capitol where about 116,000 people lived: 42 million. And in the tiny Lake County community of Old Mill Creek, with a population of just 144, more than 800,000 doses of opioid painkillers were distributed. That’s more than two pills per person every day. […]

Many of the pills — more than 700 million, to be exact — were distributed by Deerfield-based Walgreen’s, the nation’s second-largest distributor of opioids. Many were also sold by Walgreens’ retail stores, as well as at thousands of other storefront pharmacies in communities seemingly everywhere.

Those storefront pharmacies distributed and sold vast numbers of pills. A single pharmacy in Des Plaines described as a “long term care pharmacy” distributed nearly 16.5 million doses.

* Related…

* How to download and use the DEA pain pills database

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 11:19 am

Comments

Doesn’t this all start with physicians? Does it matter how many pills the manufacturers make and ship? Does it matter how many pills a pharmacy distributes? If doctors don’t prescribe, then the pills do not get out. I understand that manufacturers give out free samples to the doctors, but the doctors are the ones who choose to hand them out. Maybe I am missing something, but it seems the focus is on the wrong party.

Comment by Nanker Phelge Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 12:00 pm
Had a kidney stone flare-up a bit ago, and the doc at the ER issued a script for pain pills. I didn’t need them, but when I went to Walgreens to get the other scripts filled that were for antibiotics, the pharmacist asked me why the doc didn’t issue the pain pill script. I told her, he had but I didn’t want them… I didn’t need them. She replied, that’s good because we’re out. She continued, to her it seemed like over half the town was on same opioid or other.

The upside- at least this time the doc only wrote a script for 6 pills- no refill. When I had a tooth pulled about 5 years ago, the script was for 20 Vicodin, of which I used one and hated the effects. Rest were recycled at the police station.

We come some way down the road, but the journey is far from over to resolve a crisis at least a decade in the making.

Comment by Anon221 Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 12:20 pm
“Doesn’t this all start with physicians?”
Doesn’t this all start with the patient? The patient is prescribed pain relievers for pain. Then they take too much or want to change their mood. So now they are going to ruin it for people who have pain in the future. What about personal responsibility?

Comment by 17% Solution Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 12:24 pm
===What about personal responsibility?===

Yes, well. I think we should attempt to regulate a multi-billion dollar profit-making industry just a little bit before demanding that junkies go cold turkey.

My brother has a terrible back and pain pills were the only thing that helped him sleep through the pain. Following surgery, he continued to take them. He developed a little bit of a dependence issue, just like the manufacturers intend.

But yes, by all means, let’s blame the addicted instead of the pusher.

Comment by 47th Ward Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 12:33 pm
Nanker Phelge and 17% Solution: I’m curious why you want to be so narrow in your assignment of responsibility?

It seems like a multi-faceted problem for which patients and physicians bear some responsibility, to be sure, but you have to deny voluminous evidence already in the public record about how distributors and manufacturers operated, combined with lacking even a high school level understanding of American capitalism, to suggest the focus should not be on those who have made the most money from what is rightly understood to be an epidemic.

Is it just a reflexive “businesses can do no wrong” viewpoint you have?

Or is it that corporations are legal abstractions, whereas corrupt physicians and addicts are people to whom you can feel morally superior and therefore you derive some kind of small psychic boost from focusing on them to the exclusion of other contributors to the problem?

Or, is it something else? Please explain. Thank you.

Comment by Moe Berg Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:01 pm
Opioid pills scare me. But I needed them during a shingles attack. It felt like my nerves were trying to burn their way out from the inside. Am off the opioid now.

We should be able to monitor distribution and usage to reduce addiction while still treating intense and/or chronic pain.

Comment by Last Bull Moose Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:04 pm
Some rural Illinois counties are lucky if they have even 1 Pharmacy. Residents drive 10-30 minutes for their Rx. Looking at Pharmacy locations would not be as accurate as looking at Patient Zip Codes.

Comment by GreenWalls Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:06 pm
“Doesn’t this all start with physicians? *** Maybe I am missing something, but it seems the focus is on the wrong party.”

The complaint also accuses Purdue of rarely reporting allegedly illegal activity, such as improper prescribing, to government officials when it learned about it. In one 2009 case, a Purdue sales manager wrote to a company official that Purdue was promoting opioids to an illegal pill mill.

“I feel very certain this is an organized drug ring,” the employee wrote, adding “Shouldn’t the DEA be contacted about this?” Purdue did nothing for two years, according to the complaint.

https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/15/massachusetts-purdue-lawsuit-new-details/

– MrJM

Comment by @misterjayem Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:34 pm
Opioids are the opiate of the masses…way more profitable than religion.

Comment by Dotnonymous Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:35 pm
Who are the malicious “drug dealers” …again?

Comment by Dotnonymous Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:37 pm
” Doesn’t this all start with the patient? The patient is prescribed pain relievers for pain. Then they take too much or want to change their mood. *** What about personal responsibility?”

Since OxyContin came on the market, more than 200,000 Americans have died of overdoses related to prescription opioids. As reports of overdoses grew, Richard Sackler urged the company to blame the patients. “We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,” he wrote in a 2001 email disclosed in documents filed in the Massachusetts case. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”

That year, after a federal prosecutor highlighted 59 OxyContin-related deaths in one state, Mr. Sackler wrote: “This is not too bad. It could have been far worse.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/health/sacklers-oxycontin-lawsuits.html

– MrJM

Comment by @misterjayem Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:37 pm
>What about personal responsibility?

I see your point, under the assumption that the doctor explained the addictive nature of the medications, discussed and tried less- or non-addictive alternatives, kept the amount and length of the prescription as minimal as possible based on the individual circumstances and required follow-up visits at individually appropriate intervals to monitor pain levels and usage. We license and pay doctors to be experts on our behalf, so that’s one place I start looking when there’s a systemic problem. And by ’systemic,’ I mean I”m not laying all the blame on doctors.

Comment by Earnest Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:42 pm
Or is it that corporations are legal abstractions - Moe Berg

That’s a great point…a corporation provides cover for individual people to hide behind.

Time to overturn Citizen’s United…stripping away false “Corporate Cover” revealing men and women just like you and me…and no more.

Comment by Dotnonymous Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 1:48 pm
For the sake of clarity…opioid dependence and opioid addiction are separate.

They are related but distinct by definition.

Many people are dependent on two daily cups of coffee…very few people become addicted to ever increasing amounts of caffeine or experience tolerance to caffeine.

Many people who use prescription opiods are dependent…vulnerable persons may become quickly addicted thereby seeking ever increasing dosages.

Addiction is a miserable disease…as any conscious person suffering from addiction will attest.

Addicts are not to blame for opioid addiction…those who lied to people suffering from addiction are.

Comment by Dotnonymous Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 2:16 pm
I had an extreme case of spinal stenosis — pain was between 7-9 on the pain scale. They mistakenly prescribed me oxycodone when I wanted hydrocodone — oxycodone removed the pain entirely, but wore off too fast. Hydrocodone leveled the pain at a manageable level, and that allowed me to sleep.

My wife picked up the oxycodone, discovered it was the wrong thing after she got to the car, then went back. It was too late. We couldn’t get the medicine that I needed now that we’d picked up the wrong one, and I was only able to sleep in a chair for two hours at a time because of it.

My doctor phoned in new prescriptions, but we couldn’t get them filled. About a month after I had gotten my last steroid injection in my back (and I was back at work) the pharmacy called to say that my hydrocodone could be picked up.

We didn’t need it any more, but decided to get it anyway in case something like this ever happened again. Now it’s in a locked drawer in the house.

Yes, there’s a real opioid problem, but they have to figure out a way to let people who need the medications get them.

Comment by Stuff Happens Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 2:42 pm
Before medical cannabis, I was prescribed over 200 hydrocodone A MONTH for years! This is the norm. The federal system needs reform.

Comment by Veteran No Longer Needs Them Monday, Jul 29, 19 @ 3:09 pm
“Is it just a reflexive “businesses can do no wrong” viewpoint you have?
Or is it that corporations are legal abstractions, whereas corrupt physicians and addicts are people to whom you can feel morally superior and therefore you derive some kind of small psychic boost from focusing on them to the exclusion of other contributors to the problem?
Or, is it something else? Please explain. Thank you.”

None of the above. I don’t feel morally superior to anyone. I don’t think addicts are corrupt.
Look the manufacterers have a job, making painkillers to kill pain in patients. They did that job. They can’t control what individuals do once the pills leave the factory.
These pills are meant for acute temporary pain relief. They are not meant for long term cronic pain, not meant to ease depression, not meant to help one get to sleep, not meant to ease boredom. When people use the pills off market they get into trouble.
Now because of their bad judgement it will be harder in the future for people with legitmate acute pain to get some relief.

Comment by 17% Solution Thursday, Aug 1, 19 @ 7:27 am