Posted on 12/20/2018 12:47:45 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
In just 10 months, the sixth-largest company in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids nearly 10,000 pills a day on average to a single pharmacy in a Southern West Virginia town with only 400 residents, according to a congressional report released Wednesday.
McKesson Corp. supplied massive quantities of the painkiller hydrocodone to the now-shuttered Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit, even after an employee at the companys Ohio drug warehouse flagged the suspect pill orders in 2007, the report found. That year, McKesson ranked 6th in the Fortune 500 reviewed its customers, including Sav-Rite, and reported to the Drug Enforcement Administration that the purchases were reasonable, according to the report.
McKessons shipments to Kermit and to other small towns in West Virginias southern coalfields were among more than a dozen case studies cited in a scathing report released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, after an 18-month investigation into pill dumping in West Virginia.
In addition to McKesson, the report sharply criticizes drug distributors Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen along with regional suppliers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith for systemic failures that contributed to the worsening of the opioid epidemic by sending an inordinate number of prescription painkillers to the state.
McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health alone combined to ship more than 900 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills between 2005 and 2016. Thousands of West Virginians fatally overdosed after taking those prescription opioids during that time.
The report also blasts the DEA for turning a blind eye to the problem.
Our bipartisan investigation revealed a number of alarming failures by the DEA and drug distributors to address the opioid epidemic, said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, the committees chairman. In instances identified by the report, [the] DEA and the drug distributors did not meet their obligations, and played a part in contributing to our nations opioid crisis.
The report includes a transcribed interview with Dr. Joseph Mastandrea, board chairman of Miami-Luken, which also shipped millions of pain pills to Kermit. Mastandrea called the shipments by his company and its competitors to the small coal town an abomination.
Clearly, this was drug diversion, Mastandrea said. No one was paying attention.
oh no, not suspicious at all
this is not the robust and hardy population that Teddy Roosevelt talked about..
no way does America survive the way this is going....
Khrushchev was right....they didn't need bombs to destroy America..
Interesting. In WW1 Kaiser Wilhelm frequently prowled around the area just behind the lines during major battles on the Westfront. Since he spoke English certainly better than many Americans today he several times stopped his caravan to speak to British/Empire soldiers or Americans who had been captured and were carrying/supporting a wounded comrade. In part it was to have his imperial flunkies stop an ambulance and have the wounded evacuated (Wilhelm was in some was a very kind and generous person his head was just unfortunately stuffed with crap). After one of these roadside visits in which he and an AEF infantry Sgt. discussed of all things TR. The Sgt seemed impressed the Kaiser considered himself a friend of TR and the very high opinion Wilhelm had of Roosevelt. The Sgt impressed the Kaiser and after he had gotten an ambulance stopped to evacuated a wounded US soldier the Sgt and another GI were helping along Wilhelm opined to his immediate staff in his field limo that the Sgt was a typical American, polite and respectful but with a strong sense of his self worth and his equality as a person with others. His concluding comment was ‘Gentlemen, that was a typical American and there are tens of millions of them. They are naturally hardy, brave and soldier like. They are going to give us huge problems and I don't know if we can hold them off.” Sadly a century has done a lot and not for the good to our population. The ‘average American’ of 1918 is fast being supplanted by what you describe above.
Culling the herd to bring in their replacements from Central America!
Drug addiction is what big Pharma is all about.
White genocide.
Democrats are happy to see white people die any way and any how.
Is Jessco still alive?
I’m thinking it was on Longmire?
get the names of politicians who own stock in these drugs -
Are stockholders names public record?
FOLLOW THE MONEY
These are distribution firms, wholesalers.
They ARE NOT drug firms.
DRUG FIRMS manufacture medications.
Yeah. If this was MONEY, they would be audited by the IRS. I have to think the pills both fed (still feed) deadly addictions as well as facilitate and prolong vile criminal behaviors.
***The problem here starts in the doctors office. If there is blame start with the abuser and the doctor.***
Reminds me of the 1970s when some doctors offices had lines of people, out the door and around the corner waiting to get prescriptions for various “pills”.
“nearly 10,000 pills a day on average”
And that’s proves what?
One pharmacist might have been making money by buying in large wholesale quantity and reselling in smaller lots.
Buy at 90 cents a pill and resell to your fellow pharmacists at $1 a pill is $1,000/day profit.
I’d like to make $1,000/day with maybe $100,000 in capital.
Much of lower Manhattan north of the Wall Street area was once a wholesale district.
“McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health alone combined to ship more than 900 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills between 2005 and 2016.”
I believe they distribute a very large share of the entire US prescription drug market of about $300 billion/year.
McDonald’s sells lots of hamburgers.
It’s the wholesale distributors’ job to ship pills to pharmacies.
It’s the job of the State of West Virginia’s job to regulate its doctors and its pharmacists.
“Makes me want to watch my DVD of The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia again.”
I’ve seen it at least 3 times already ... but now that you mention it, it’s probably time to watch it again!
get the names of politicians who own stock in these drugs -
Hell, forget politicians that own stock...in Bridgeport, WV (NOT a poor town by any stretch) a pharmicist who was also the MAYOR pleaded down to a charge of “ unlawfully distributing prescription painkillers”. For this, former mayor Mario Blunt got a whopping 36 months in the hoosgow to be followed by 36 months supervised release.
Can’t seem to find out how much time he actually served though.
“But, oh. They did have three marijuana dispensaries.”
Observed that same phenomenon in CO on vacation a couple of summers ago. The really successful small towns usually paired the MJ dispensary with a next-door tattoo parlor and a brew-pub restaurant down the street. Occasionally, a local/non-Starbucks coffee house was part of the formula.
Don’t forget the fast food munchies place. If I were smart, I’d retire to Colorado and open of a junk food place right next door to the dope shop.
You remember the story a few months ago of that girl scout selling GS cookies right outside a dispensary? She sold cookies by the caseload.
Smart girl.
In 2007? I’m so glag Congress is on top of things!
The fact no drug executive has their head on a pike over the opioid crisis shows the masses need to take their nation back
These people lied intentionally, and turned millions into addicts.. 70k a year now die so they can live in gated communities and profit from their lives being destroyed.
And not a one of them has faced any justice... nor will they.
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