Painkillers flood West Virginia and 1,728 died using them

Out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million addictive and potentially lethal hydrocodone pills in two years to one pharmacy in Kermit, which is in Mingo County, which has the 4^th highest prescription opioid death rate in the nation’s counties, according to a Charleston Gazette-Mail article by Eric Eyre.

A small pharmacy in Oceana, which is in Wyoming County, received 600 times as many oxycodone pills as the Rite Aid drug store eight blocks away.

In six years, drug wholesales moved 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills into West Virginia, where 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those painkillers. That’s 433 pain pills for every person living in the state.