Report: DEA records show West Virginia flooded with drugs

[DonViejo]

Source: Associated Press


MONDAY, DEC 19, 2016 02:45 PM EST

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia’s leading newspaper has obtained previously confidential Drug Enforcement Administration records that put numbers on the state’s epidemic of overdoses.

It shows wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills in just six years as 1,728 people fatally overdosed on these two painkillers.

That amounts to 433 pills for every man, woman and child in the state, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, which published part two of its investigation Monday.

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.

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2016/12/19/report-dea-records-show-west-virginia-flooded-with-drugs/

[Warpy]

1. Looks like there's a Pill Mill or two in operation there

usually honoring prescriptions written by out of state doctors. Chances are that they relocated when Florida got too hot for them.

As usual, the DEA crackdown will hit the wrong people the hardest, probably chronic pain patients with legitimate prescriptions.

[Dopers_Greed]

2. And this is Dumpf country

I bet people in these areas think that "he alone" can fix it.

We'll see how much worse this gets when he appoints a pharma CEO as Drug Czar.

[Fast Walker 52]

4. sell more pills!!!!

[Fast Walker 52]

3. WTF... and this was all legal???

[hollowdweller]

5. WV has the largest % of people on disability/ssi of any other state

A lot of those people have musculoskeletal complaints.

WV also has an aging population.

So those are big reasons.

The other reason is poverty. It's a money making thing for poor people.

[Va Lefty]

6. This was from a documentary about a WVA family

The White Family "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia"

Not sure why they put Lexington Ken. in title. Boone County is in WVA

[jmowreader]

7. How much of that is going out of state?

There are 1.8 million residents of West Virginia, and not all of them drop pills. 130 million doses of opiods per year is enough to kill a very large herd of elephants - if all these pills were being consumed in West Virginia there would be many more fatal overdoses. And West Virginia borders four other states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky.

They need to get this shit cleaned up, and they've got ONE MONTH before Kahel Duterte takes office and allows people to start gunning down drug addicts in the streets.