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 panels 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 didnt 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.
Thats more than half of all painkillers
shipped to the pharmacy those years. In a single year (2008 to 2009), Miami-Lukens
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-Lukens 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 committees letter.
The following year, the Virginia Board of
Medicine suspended the doctors license, finding his practice posed a substantial
danger to public health and safety. The panels letter also mentions Miami-Lukens
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. Smiths
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 committees 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 committees 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 committees 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..
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