This was the SIXTH largest drug company... counting for just TEN MONTHS
And that ONE Black person was aged 15-19: http://censusviewer.com/city/WV/Kermit
Sixth-largest American drug firm sent more than 3 MILLION opioid prescriptions to West Virginia town with population of just 400 in 10 months
- McKesson Corp. sent 'massive quantities' of hydocodone to the now closed Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia
- The deliveries continued even after a McKesson warehouse in Ohio flagged the orders in 2007
- More than 3 million prescription opioids were delivered to West Virginia in the span of 10 months - that averages out to 10,000 pills a day
- McKesson had reported to the Drug Enforcement Administration that purchases made were 'reasonable' during that period
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/...le_d229b33b-c55a-5451-ab3f-b545476516d4.html?
The six-largest drug firm in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids to a single pharmacy in West Virginia over the course of 10 months - averaging out to 10,000 pills a day.
McKesson Corp. sent 'massive quantities' of hydocodone to the now closed Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, according to a congressional report that was released on Wednesday.
The deliveries continued even after a McKesson warehouse in Ohio flagged the orders in 2007, added the report obtained by the West Virginia Gazette Mail.
McKesson had reported to the Drug Enforcement Administration that purchases made were 'reasonable' during that period.
The shipments made to Kermit and to other southern coalfields in the state were among a dozen 'case studies' used in the report, released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen were also blasted by the scathing report - which also included regional suppliers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith.
The report claimed that all took part in systemic 'failures that contributed to the worsening of the opioid epidemic' by sending an 'inordinate' number of painkillers to the state.
Between 2005 and 2016, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health shipped 900 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills.
The number of those who fatally overdosed in West Virginia as a result reached the thousands.
The DEA was also critiqued heavily in the report.
'Our bipartisan investigation revealed a number of alarming failures by the DEA and drug distributors to address the opioid epidemic,' said Representative Greg Walden, R-Oregon, the committee's chairman.
'In instances identified by the report, [the] DEA and the drug distributors did not meet their obligations, and played a part in contributing to our nation's opioid crisis.'
Included in the report was a transcribed interview with Dr. Joseph Mastandrea, board chairman of Miami-Luken, where he referred to the shipments sent to the small town as an 'abomination.'
Only Miami-Luken has accepted any wrongdoing for the prescriptions, while the other four have denied any wrongdoing.
On Wednesday, Cardinal Health said it would 'continue to implement rigorous anti-diversion controls,' adding that it was an 'intermediary' in the supply chain.
AmerisourceBergen added: 'The comparatively few examinations of AmerisourceBergen's actions primarily focus on due diligence surrounding physicians.
'AmerisourceBergen has virtually no interaction with physicians and limited legal ability to gather information on their practices and prescribing behavior.'
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/...cle_d229b33b-c55a-5451-ab3f-b545476516d4.html
Among other findings spotlighted in the report:
- Distributors’ shipments often increased dramatically from one month to the next — or even week-to-week. In just two weeks, Cardinal Health’s sales jumped 1,500 percent to a drugstore in Williamson.
- Distributors continued to supply pharmacies with prescription painkillers, even though the companies were aware the drugstores were filling prescriptions for rogue doctors under investigation.
- In 2011, AmerisourceBergen, which shipped to Westside Pharmacy in Oceana, had a list of “pain doctors” who were writing the bulk of the store’s prescriptions. Five of the six had been convicted of federal charges or are under investigation. One doctor was located in Pembroke, Virginia, 100 miles away.
- The companies ignored federal laws that require them to report pharmacies that ordered a questionable number of prescription pain pills. Between 2006 and 2012, McKesson shipped 162.6 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia, but didn’t send any suspicious-order reports to the DEA. During the next four years, McKesson submitted 10,000 such reports.
- Distributors set limits on the number of opioids pharmacies could buy, but the companies routinely allowed the drugstores to exceed those caps. In Kermit, Sav-Rite ordered and received 36 times as many pills as McKesson’s in-house drug monitoring program permitted.
- As overdose deaths increased, the DEA’s enforcement actions against distributors declined — from 58 in 2011 to five in 2015.
- The DEA failed to use its drug-tracking database to flag massive shipments of painkillers to small towns like Kermit, Mount Gay and Williamson. Distributors shipped 13 million prescription opioids to Kermit between 2006 and 2012. By contrast, four Rite-Aid pharmacies combined only received about half that number of pills.
- For years, the DEA assigned only two agents to investigate the illegal diversion of prescription drugs in the entire state. West Virginia had the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation those years — and still does. The agency now has eight drug diversion investigators here.
Last edited:
