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Report: Distributors, DEA failed to abate US opioid crisis
Source: Associated Press
Report: Distributors, DEA failed to abate US opioid crisis
By JOHN RABY
December 20, 2018
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A congressional report on prescription pill dumping in West Virginia blames U.S. prescription drug distributors and the Drug Enforcement Administration for not doing enough to help mitigate the nation’s opioid addiction and overdose crisis.
The 324-page report released Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee followed an 18-month investigation and focused on the three largest U.S. wholesale drug companies, McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, and regional distributors.
The report cited examples of massive pill shipments to West Virginia, which has a population of 1.8 million and has by far the nation’s highest death rate from prescription drugs. McKesson shipped an average of 9,650 hydrocodone pills per day in 2007 to a now-closed pharmacy in Kermit, which has a population of about 400. The shipments were 36 times above a monthly dosage shipment threshold the company had established that year.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail previously cited federal records that showed drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia from 2007 to 2012, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on the painkillers. Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize last year for investigative reporting on the subject.
The committee report calls the shipments “troubling” and said it raises serious questions about compliance with the DEA-administered Controlled Substances Act. Until at least 2010, the DEA didn’t proactively review usage data to combat the diversion of drugs for illicit purposes, the report said.
-snip-
By JOHN RABY
December 20, 2018
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A congressional report on prescription pill dumping in West Virginia blames U.S. prescription drug distributors and the Drug Enforcement Administration for not doing enough to help mitigate the nation’s opioid addiction and overdose crisis.
The 324-page report released Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee followed an 18-month investigation and focused on the three largest U.S. wholesale drug companies, McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, and regional distributors.
The report cited examples of massive pill shipments to West Virginia, which has a population of 1.8 million and has by far the nation’s highest death rate from prescription drugs. McKesson shipped an average of 9,650 hydrocodone pills per day in 2007 to a now-closed pharmacy in Kermit, which has a population of about 400. The shipments were 36 times above a monthly dosage shipment threshold the company had established that year.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail previously cited federal records that showed drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia from 2007 to 2012, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on the painkillers. Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize last year for investigative reporting on the subject.
The committee report calls the shipments “troubling” and said it raises serious questions about compliance with the DEA-administered Controlled Substances Act. Until at least 2010, the DEA didn’t proactively review usage data to combat the diversion of drugs for illicit purposes, the report said.
-snip-
Read more: https://apnews.com/d05052dcfb0f46468a2b5272473d7aa8
