Here's How Many Pain Pills PG County Pharmacies Receive

A new report shows billions of painkillers flowed through nearly 83,000 pharmacies across the country, including many in Prince George's County. A previously unreleased database managed by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration logged where roughly 70 billion pills containing oxycodone and hydrocodone were shipped to, The Washington Post reported Monday.

While the database doesn’t specify what happened after the pharmacies received the shipments, it does illuminate the sheer number of pills that flooded communities. The data includes numbers from 2006 to 2012, the Post reported. Chain and retail pharmacies were included.

The database lists many pharmacies within five miles of Prince George's County that received hundreds of thousands of pills from 2006 to 2012. The largest recipient of pain pills in Prince George's County, according to the database, is Accokeek Drug Health Care located at 15789 Livingston Road in Accokeek. A total of 4,189,560 pills were shipped to this pharmacy between 2006 and 2012, which would be enough for 54 pills per year for each of the 10,950 people who live within five miles of the pharmacy.

Five pharmacies in Kentucky, Illinois, Idaho and Kansas received the most painkillers per person each year, the Post found. With a total of nearly 6.8 million pills, Shearer Drug in Clinton County, Kentucky, saw the most pills per person per year at 96.

Areas deluged with pain pills saw far higher death rates related to opioids, the Post found. While the national rate was 4.6 deaths per 100,000 residents, counties that received the most pain pills per person saw rates that were more than three times higher.

Perhaps the most startling finding was that just 15 percent of pharmacies received nearly half of the pain pills.

According to the latest provisional data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States last year, a 5 percent decline from 2017. The agency predicted that number will rise to more than 680,000 once all data is reported to them.

In its previous report in July, 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.

Patch national staffers Dan Hampton and Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this report.