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Drug Firms Shipped 20.8 Million Pain Pills To West Virginia Town of 2,900 (foxnews.com)

A congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis has discovered out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers over a decade to two pharmacies in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people. From a report: Between 2006 and 2016, two drug wholesalers shipped 10.2 million hydrocodone pills and 10.6 million oxycodone pills to Tug Valley Pharmacy and Hurley Drug in the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. "These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia," the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J. said in a joint statement.

2 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Almost Heaven, West Virginia by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What gets me about cases like this is how LONG it took to find the pharmacy pushing out 20E6 pills or the individual doctor prescribing hundreds of thousands a year. Yes, the do pop up now and again, but these drugs are tightly controlled. I have to fill out a triplicate form to get a couple of morphine ampules for our ambulances.

    Does anybody actually LOOK at those forms. If I ordered 5000 ampules would anyone notice?

    Asking for a friend.....

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    1. Re:Almost Heaven, West Virginia by pr0fessor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They were shipped to two pharmacies in the small town but is also county seat and has the only hospital in the county. They are forgetting that this town with the only hospital serves other communities inside and outside that county of 26,000+ people.