Opioid Crisis: 1.9 Billion Pain Pills Flooded Illinois In 7 Years

ILLINOIS — The news from the federal government that drug overdose deaths in the United States declined in 2018 for the first time in three decades comes just as a new report published by The Washington Post shows the staggering number of opioid pills that flooded the country and contributed to the opioid crisis.

According to the data published by The Post, 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills were distributed across the country between 2006-2012. The figures come from a DEA database that The Post and The Charleston Gazette-Mail sued to obtain. A judge in Cleveland overseeing a combined lawsuit from cities across the country against drug companies granted the newspapers partial access to the database following an appeal.

The Post also published the figures showing how many pain pills reached individual states and counties.

In Illinois, 1.9 billion prescription pain pills were distributed between 2006 and 2012. More than 566 million were distributed in Cook County alone.

According to the latest provisional data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 67,744 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2018, a 5 percent decline from the previous year. The agency predicts that number will rise to more than 680,000 once all data is reported to them.

In Illinois, there were 2,202 drug overdose deaths in 2017, for a rate of 17.2 deaths per 100,000 people — higher than the national rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 people. The biggest increase involved synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, with a rise from 127 deaths in 2014 to 1,187 deaths in 2017. Deaths involving heroin also increased significantly in the same three-year period, from 844 to 1,251 deaths.

Conversely, the number of opioid prescriptions written by health care providers was the lowest in the state since data became available in 2006. In 2017, Illinois providers wrote 51.1 opioid prescriptions for every 100 people. But the number of overdose deaths involving prescription opioids has not followed the same trend: between 2015 and 2017, the rate increased more than 75 percent to 4.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

In its report, The Post said 75 percent of the pills distributed in the seven-year period came from six companies with pharmacies: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS and Walmart.

Four other companies were identified by the paper as being among the top 10 distributors of opioids: Smith Drug Co., Rite Aid, Kroger and H.D. Smith.

>>>You can read the full report from The Washington Post here.