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PARKERSBURG -- A national database shows Wood, Washington and neighboring counties received millions of opioid pills during a seven-year period, enough to supply every resident with weeks or months of prescription painkillers.
The data was made public after The Washington Post along with HD Media, which publishes the Charleston Gazette-Mail, sued the national Drug Enforcement Administration for access to its Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System.
The Post published an online database of prescription pill distribution by state and county, including the average number per person per year, the companies that supplied the most pills and the businesses which received the most pills during that time period. The numbers do not necessarily mean that number of pills were used within that county, as some prescriptions were written or filled for people coming from other areas.
The numbers, however, show how a flood of prescription painkillers was a factor in the start of a nationwide opioid crisis.
In Wood County, nearly 40 million pain pills were distributed between 2006-2012, an average of 65 pills per person per year. More than 23 million of the pills were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
Bond's Pharmacy in Washington, W.Va., topped the list of Wood County pharmacies receiving pills at nearly 3 million. However, CVS accounted for three of the top five pharmacies on the list, having distributed nearly 8 million pills total.
Bond's did not respond to an email seeking comment.
In Washington County, more than 23 million pills were distributed between 2006-2012, an average of about 53 pills per person per year. About 4.6 million of those pills were distributed by McKesson Corporation and about 13.3 million were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
Walmart in Marietta was the pharmacy with the highest number of pills received during that seven-year period with more than 3.5 million pills.
Wood County Sheriff Steve Stephens said while he knew the area had been flooded with prescription pills, he was still shocked at the numbers.
"What troubles me is that is just up to 2012," he said. "Our overdoses have really been in the past three to four years. I'm curious to see how many pills were distributed after 2012."
Stephens said legislative efforts to track pain pill distribution and to address doctors over-prescribing pills helped slow the opioids, but may have inadvertently given rise to overdose deaths.
"That's when your heroin started coming in and fentanyl," he said. "A lot of people aren't using the pills anymore; they are getting the stuff from the street. You don't know what concoction you are putting into your system.
"I don't recall ever having the overdoses like we do now," Stephens said.
Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks said while the number of pills distributed through the county is "shockingly high," it was not a surprise.
"It has been and will continue to be a huge problem in our community," he said. "At one point those big pill companies were really marketing oxycontin in this area, as they were all over the country."
Mincks said as prescription pills became more expensive and harder to obtain, addicts turned to other drugs, which in turn led to the surge of overdose deaths and drug-related crimes.
"Those addicted have turned to other cheaper and more easily-obtained drugs," Mincks said. "We just seized over 200 grams of heroin over the past couple days. We have a lot of addicts within the county. The federal government and state have done a lot to control those pills, but we still have the problem of the addicts."
"Being from this area, honestly, it's not really a shocking number," said Dwayne Blair, intake coordinator for Recovery Point in Parkersburg. "We've seen first-hand, it's taken a toll on the Mid-Ohio Valley."
Blair, who has been in recovery for 18 months and now helps others find recovery, said while his addiction did not start with prescription opioids, many others' did, and while he did not use heroin, he saw it often used as a cheap and powerful alternative to other drugs.
"I did see it affect other people in my life," he said. Heroin use "stemmed from our need for something faster, something stronger. The restriction of pain medications gave the opportunity for heroin and other substances to be made available, because the more we get the more we need."
Blair said he hopes the information raises community awareness of the origins of the drug epidemic, and more people will seek help with addiction.
"Recovery has grown so much in the area over the past 10 years, it's nice to know there is an answer for people who are seeking it," he said.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the numbers "obscene" and said they represented a "dramatic failure" among the pharmaceutical industry as well as government accountability.
"The state and federal governments were asleep at the switch for a long time. The DEA approved an ever-increasing number of pills and failed to act upon suspicious orders," he said. "It was a dramatic failure of everyone through the pharmaceutical supply chain."
Morrisey said some of the numbers were released by his office back in 2013 because officials believed the information should have been made available. His office along with countless other agencies throughout the nation have worked to hold all parties accountable and to stem the flow of prescription opioids.
"There are a lot of people that have been working to get the numbers down. I think it's important to show what's been happening" since 2012, he said. "Those numbers have been coming down, but we've got a lot more work to do."
Michael Erb can be reached at merb@newsandsentinel.com.