76 Billion Pills Helped Fuel Opioid Epidemic: Report

The pharmaceutical industry shipped 76 billion opioid pills nationwide during the first surge of the opioid epidemic from 2006 to 2012, including enough pills to give every person in Suffolk County 20 pills a year, according to a new analysis by The Washington Post.

The Post analyzed data released earlier this week by the Drug Enforcement Administration as part of a major federal civil lawsuit against 10 pharmaceutical companies that manufactured the vast majority of the drugs. The lawsuit, which combines cases filed by more than 2,000 counties, cities and towns into one case being heard in Cleveland, is larger even than the massive case against the tobacco companies litigated nearly two decades ago.

Nationwide, some 100,000 people died from opioid overdoses during the period covered by The Post analysis.

Drug companies sent nearly 1.3 billion opioid pills to prescribers in Massachusetts from 2006 to 2012, the analysis showed. During that period, more than 3,900 people died of overdoses, according to the state Department of Health. Deaths have continued to climb since then, reaching 2,100 in 2017, the department said.

The Post's data said the average annual number of pills distributed per person in 2006-2012 ranged from 19.7 in Middlesex County to 20 in Suffolk County, 23. 6 in Norfolk County, 33.2 in Essex County and nearly 39 in Dukes County.

Bad as it has been in Massachusetts — the death rate from opioids is 28.2 per 100,000, almost twice the national average — the opioid epidemic was far worse in other parts of the country, notably the Appalachian areas of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

In West Virginia, for example, the opioid death rate is 49.6 per 100,000, about three times the national average, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. As The Post analysis showed, average annual opioid pill distribution was staggeringly high in some counties in those states, including more than 200 per person in Mingo County, WV.

Source: The Washington Post

In 2015, Massachusetts was the first state to impose legal limits on the duration of opioid prescriptions, at seven days. A wide-ranging 2018 law went further, requiring all prescribers to convert to secure electronic prescriptions and expanding treatment and recovery options, among other measures.