Posted on 01/30/2018 7:28:06 AM PST by markomalley
Over the past decade, out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people, according to a congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the massive shipments of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — to the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, amid the panel’s inquiry into the role of drug distributors in the opioid epidemic.
“These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” said committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., in a joint statement.
The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn’t flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia.
The letters outline high-volume shipments to pharmacies over consecutive days and huge spikes in pain pill numbers from year to year.
Between 2006 and 2016, drug wholesalers shipped 10.2 million hydrocodone pills and 10.6 million oxycodone pills to Tug Valley Pharmacy and Hurley Drug in Williamson, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data obtained by the House Committee.
Springboro, Ohio-based Miami-Luken sold 6.4 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to Tug Valley Pharmacy from 2008 to 2015, the company disclosed to the panel. That’s more than half of all painkillers shipped to the pharmacy those years. In a single year (2008 to 2009), Miami-Luken’s shipments increased three-fold to the Mingo County town.
Miami-Luken also was a major supplier to the now-closed Save-Rite Pharmacy in the Mingo County town of Kermit, population 400.
The drug wholesaler shipped 5.7 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to Save-Rite and a branch pharmacy called Sav-Rite #2 between 2005 and 2011, according records Miami-Luken gave the committee. In 2008, the company provided 5,624 prescription pain pills for every man, woman and child in Kermit.
In its letters, the panel also raised questions about Miami-Luken’s shipments to Westside Pharmacy in Oceana, Wyoming County. The committee cited documents that show a Miami-Luken employee reported a Virginia doctor, who operated a pain clinic located two hours from Oceana, was sending his patients to Westside Pharmacy, which filled the prescriptions.
In 2015, more than 40 percent of the oxycodone prescriptions filled by Westside Pharmacy in Oceana were coming from the Virginia doctor, according to the committee’s letter. The following year, the Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the doctor’s license, finding his practice posed a “substantial danger to public health and safety.”
The panel’s letter also mentions Miami-Luken’s suspicious shipments to Colony Drug in Beckley. In a five-day span in 2015, the drug wholesaler shipped 16,800 oxycodone pills to the pharmacy.
“In several instances, Colony Drug placed multiple orders for what appears to be excessive amounts of pills on consecutive days,” the committee wrote.
The House committee questioned H.D. Smith’s painkiller shipments to Family Discount Pharmacy in Logan County. The drug shipper distributed 3,000 hydrocodone tablets a day to the pharmacy in 2008, a 10-fold increase in sales from the previous year, according to the committee’s letter. The pharmacy, located in a town of 1,800 people, was shipped 1.1 million hydrocodone pills in 2008.
The House panel also cited Springfield, Illinois-based H.D. Smith for spikes in painkiller shipments to Sav-Rite, Westside Pharmacy, Tug Valley Pharmacy and Hurley Drug.
Oxycodone is sold under brand names like OxyContin, while hydrocodone brands include Vicodin and Lortab.
“The committee’s bipartisan investigation continues to identify systemic issues with the inordinate number of opioids distributed to small town pharmacies,” Walden and Pallone said in the statement. “The volume appears to be far in excess of the number of opioids that a pharmacy in that local area would be expected to receive.”
In a statement, H.D. Smith said it was reviewing the committee’s letter Monday.
“H.D. Smith works with its upstream manufacturing and downstream pharmacy partners to guard the integrity of the supply chain, and to improve patient outcomes,” the company said.
Miami-Luken did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In February 2016, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey ended a state lawsuit against Miami-Luken after the company agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that it flooded the state with painkillers. Morrisey, a former lobbyist for a trade group that represents Miami-Luken and other drug distributors, inherited the lawsuit in 2013 after ousting longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw.
H.D. Smith paid the state $3.5 million to settle the same pill-dumping allegations in January 2017.
The committee gave H.D. Smith and Miami-Luken until Feb. 9 to turn over documents and answer dozens of questions about what steps, if any, the companies took to stop the flood of pain pills into Southern West Virginia.
“We will continue to investigate these distributors’ shipments of large quantities of powerful opioids across West Virginia, including what seems to be a shocking lack of oversight over their distribution practices,” Walden and Pallone said.
The state has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation. More than 880 people fatally overdosed in West Virginia in 2016.
“THEY MUST BE IN A LOTTA PAIN IN THAT TOWN....................”
If Manchin was your Senator I’m sure you would do everything possible to kill the pain.
If I had to put a bet on this I would say the doctors were ordering the pills, shipping them to out of country pharmacies and bagging some profits.
Honestly, any company with competent techs, and above-board management would have had this flagged from day one.
Hmm. A billionaire pill maker and his wife were just murdered and arranged to look like a murder/suicide situation in Vancouver a few weeks ago. I wonder...........
“...Honestly, any company with competent techs, and above-board management would have had this flagged from day one....”
Yep. One would think so. However, money changes people...and not always for the better. People get sucked in by the allure: “How much cash do you need today to overlook that shipment?” Once they have you, they have you forever.
It’s not terribly different from here but that show was somewhat staged. The look and feel is somewhat the same. Trailers and trash everywhere. People really do look and act like that including some of my relatives. Meth(Hillbilly Heroin) touches everybody.
Pain pills were/are everywhere but drying up rapidly so heroin is taking its place.
Who ordered the pain killers? Companies normally do not ship until someone orders.
Bush 41 was the instigator with Bubba on that deal.
I bought that movie on Fred Reed’s recommendation (fredoneverything.com), right after moving to rural KY.
Truth be told, I don’t have to drive very far from my own home to come across that sort of stuff.
I tell people that I love where I live, but if I hear banjo music, I paddle faster.
My family is 8 generations WVa
It was very depressing seeing the regional rot
I have loved that state, and still do
Reminds me of the 1970s when pill pushing doctors had “patients” out the door and around the block who “needed” prescriptions for painkillers.
Oh yeah. “White Lightnin’” was even more disturbing (to me), featuring the same fambly. There are a number of youtube videos with Jesco White that are, er, interesting to watch.
I guess it’s less obvious than giving us blankets infected with small pox.
Was happening locally until the pill mill doctors ended up in jail. Took a few ODs before they started looking into things.
A woman (doctor) I know went to prison for it. She had her staff writing prescriptions.
Yup.
I left WV in 1990 because I could see the writing on the wall. Apathy killed the spirit of folks in the Tri-State area, IMO. “That’s they way it’s always been done,” is the answer to too many things & why no real positive change ever occurs.
I miss the people I know in WV. It is a beautiful state. Still, unless some incredible positive change occurs I will never live there again.
A lot of it is paid by Medicaid, in fact.
Definitely taxpayers are paying for it. Medicare, Medicaid.
I blame it on the confusing order forms. You mean to order 1 box and you’re really ordering 1,000 boxes.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
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