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Turd Fergusen

Veteran Member
Bold Member!
You want an opioid epidemic? This is how you get it. Where does the blame lay?


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 company’s 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.
McKesson’s shipments to Kermit — and to other small towns in West Virginia’s 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 committee’s 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 nation’s 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.”
Among other findings spotlighted in the report:

  • Distributors’ shipments often increased dramatically from one month to the next — or even week-to-week. In just two weeks, Cardinal Health’s sales jumped 1,500 percent to a drugstore in Williamson.
  • Distributors continued to supply pharmacies with prescription painkillers, even though the companies were aware the drugstores were filling prescriptions for rogue doctors under investigation.
  • In 2011, AmerisourceBergen, which shipped to Westside Pharmacy in Oceana, had a list of “pain doctors” who were writing the bulk of the store’s prescriptions. Five of the six had been convicted of federal charges or are under investigation. One doctor was located in Pembroke, Virginia, 100 miles away.
  • The companies ignored federal laws that require them to report pharmacies that ordered a questionable number of prescription pain pills. Between 2006 and 2012, McKesson shipped 162.6 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia, but didn’t send any suspicious-order reports to the DEA. During the next four years, McKesson submitted 10,000 such reports.
  • Distributors set limits on the number of opioids pharmacies could buy, but the companies routinely allowed the drugstores to exceed those caps. In Kermit, Sav-Rite ordered and received 36 times as many pills as McKesson’s in-house drug monitoring program permitted.
  • As overdose deaths increased, the DEA’s enforcement actions against distributors declined — from 58 in 2011 to five in 2015.
  • The DEA failed to use its drug-tracking database to flag massive shipments of painkillers to small towns like Kermit, Mount Gay and Williamson. Distributors shipped 13 million prescription opioids to Kermit between 2006 and 2012. By contrast, four Rite-Aid pharmacies combined only received about half that number of pills.
  • For years, the DEA assigned only two agents to investigate the illegal diversion of prescription drugs in the entire state. West Virginia had the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation those years — and still does. The agency now has eight drug diversion investigators here.
Full Article:
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/...cle_d229b33b-c55a-5451-ab3f-b545476516d4.html
 

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Obviously, it starts with the drug manufacturer/pharma company whose sales reps push the product to doctors and pharmacies. Everyone in this supply chain is greedy and cares only about the profits including most of the physicians. Along with that the American people are indoctrinated to accept whatever authority figures, including doctors, say and I don't think this has changed significantly in recent years. That makes us, the American people, vulnerable to abuse. It would be nice if people would wake up and begin to take some responsibility themselves.
 
Is this how you build a sleepy little community?
Honestly just give the people what they want
 
There were Dr.'s offices where the prescriptions were written.
Pharmacies where they were filled.
Pharmaceutical companies where the pills were made, marketed, and shipped.

A lot of people in this pipeline who would have to have known (and profited) from this. It's so sad that it taken this many people dying to get anyone to do anything about it. WV has pulled down the life expectancy for the whole U.S. because so many people have OD'd.
 
Not only do they make me sick as a dog. They don't do anything for my pain. I don't need pain relief of that nature now, but I certainly did back when I wrecked the tendons in my right arm. It's been years and I'm only now to the point where I don't have constant pain and/or discomfort.
 
I’m in pain management and I take what I’m prescribed. But after that it’s bad news, I know.
 
In the late '70's, early '80's I had a brief love affair with stimulants. As a person with life-long clinical depression, it was nearly irresistible to not feel awful. That said, I never got the appeal of downers. Good grief, I can sleep anytime I want.
 
“Our bipartisan investigation revealed a number of alarming failures by the DEA and drug distributors to address the opioid epidemic,”
That's because everyone is making bank. You don't kill that gold-egg-layer.
 
I can't take any kind of pain pill, they all make me sicker than what I was before taking it. Hours of throwing up and still hurting.

I'm with @McDanel, up there, why does everybody want to sleep so much. I don't wanna miss a minute of my day. I feel like I'm running late all day if I sleep in more than about 30 minutes.
 
In the late '70's, early '80's I had a brief love affair with stimulants. As a person with life-long clinical depression, it was nearly irresistible to not feel awful. That said, I never got the appeal of downers. Good grief, I can sleep anytime I want.
I had a long, twisted and stupid love affair with stimulants that ended about 4 years ago. I tried opiates and/or downers and I always said exactly what you said.... I can sleep anytime I want! When I read that I cracked up cause I'm not the only one!
 
That's because everyone is making bank. You don't kill that gold-egg-layer.
Yes, this:
"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." At an average of 10,000 per day, that's 25 per person per day. That's not remotely reasonable. It's clearly being trafficked.
 
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Odd that so many internal safeguards/policies and federal laws/guidelines were in place to prevent this yet all were ignored. Makes ya wonder if people in these companies were being paid off to turn a blind eye. Just as likely it was pure laziness/ineptitude however.

Curious what type of govt sanctions/fines/penalties/etc. these companies are facing due to their infractions. Im sure the govt is holding them accountable, afterall, they care about drug wars and opoid epidemics hahahahahahhaahah!!!!!!!

Hopefully the media and society at large doesnt overlook the govts role in this. Very easy to primarily blame the corporations, and many politicians themselves seem to be mainly focusing the blame in that direction. But it is outrageous that the DEA was blatantly ignoring the problem. Actually, they werent only ignoring it, they seem to have deliberately directed resources AWAY from the problem. It was worse than ignoring it, the govt CHOSE to actively avoid the problem.

Of course, we know one major culprit for how things got this bad. It is no big surprise. Look at how much politicians, congressman and senators, have gotten paid either directly or in campaign contributions buy the pharmaceutical companies. They may bitch and moan about opioid epidemics, but it's clear that many(most?) dont actually truly care.

Richard Ojeda. Look him up.
 
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I can maybe manage half of a Vicodin 10/375 without getting sick. To me that much is unimaginable!

I just recently had my Dr. reduce my dosage from 4 pills a day of the same prescription, to 3 pills a day due to the fact that I was having too many left over from each month's prescribed PRN dosage.
Even then, on most days I average only 2.5 pills a day, but I do have some bad days where I must take one every 6 hours as they're prescribed when necessary. I couldn't imagine taking up to 14 pills a day, and what this does to one's liver, let alone the addiction factor moves from the warning label of "this med can be possibly addicting" to "14 pill a day of this med will probably make you addicted".
I do not get any type of buzz or even the slightest high from the therapeutic dosage, but do still occasionally suffer some nausea - which my Dr.'s (including my neurologist) have told me is mostly due to the 375 milligrams of acetaminophen (Tylenol) that's combined with the 10 milligrams of hydrocodone.

I had frequent nausea when on morphine for a year while awaiting my spinal fusion surgery, and my neurologist stressed he did not want me to stop taking the morphine until at least 4 months after surgery as they didn't want me to deal with any possible withdrawal symptoms from the medication while I was still in early surgical recovery months.
However, I found that morphine was an awful medication as it affected my vision and it was hard to concentrate, read or even watch TV while taking it, not to mention the havoc it plays on one's upper/lower GI system.
So exactly 1 month after my surgery I had my regular GP visit, and begged if I could now stop taking it, and explained that I had already reduced my dosage by half for the past week. She knew I had taken it exactly as prescribed, never taking an "extra" dose (as doing so would also cut me short for later in the month, and be a problem then if I was in severe pain), so she asked me to continue at one half dosage for 1 more week just to be sure I had no problems stopping the medication, and one week later was down graded to the 10/375 hydrocodone/acetaminophen, which I've slowing been reducing as much as possible since then.

It's one thing for many of us who are dependent on pain medications for serious chronic pain and need them for any real quality of life, but actually being *addicted* to these medications is an entirely different monster and one that has been allowed to grow unchecked - especially when you look at any of the oxycodone/oxycontin and fentanyl drugs that are flooding both our pharmacies and streets, and are the primary drugs in the majority of the pill overdoses we're seeing across the country.
The terms "dependency" and "addiction" are often now used interchangeably, but medically speaking, they are not interchangeable whatsoever. Think of a diabetic as someone who's dependent on insulin or insulin producing medications to survive, whereas a drug/alcohol addict is not dependent on these for better health, or the ability to move more freely to toilet/prepare food, etc. for oneself without needing the aid of others as is the case with genuine chronic/severe pain patients.
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Odd that so many internal safeguards/policies and federal laws/guidelines were in place to prevent this yet all were ignored. Makes ya wonder if people in these companies were being paid off to turn a blind eye. Just as likely it was pure laziness/ineptitude however.

Curious what type of govt sanctions/fines/penalties/etc. these companies are facing due to their infractions. Im sure the govt is holding them accountable, afterall, they care about drug wars and opoid epidemics hahahahahahhaahah!!!!!!!

Hopefully the media and society at large doesnt overlook the govts role in this. Very easy to primarily blame the corporations, and many politicians themselves seem to be mainly focusing the blame in that direction. But it is outrageous that the DEA was blatantly ignoring the problem. Actually, they werent only ignoring it, they seem to have deliberately directed resources AWAY from the problem. It was worse than ignoring it, the govt CHOSE to actively avoid the problem.

Of course, we know one major culprit for how things got this bad. It is no big surprise. Look at how much politicians, congressman and senators, have gotten paid either directly or in campaign contributions buy the pharmaceutical companies. They may bitch and moan about opioid epidemics, but it's clear that many(most?) dont actually truly care.

Richard Ojeda. Look him up.


I often wonder if part of the problem with some of the heaviest opioids that are on the streets may be due in large part to the manufactures actually aiding in the illegal sales of these drugs.
The amount of fentanyl on the streets alone is so high, it's hard to believe it's all coming from patients selling their prescriptions, or what's being trafficked here to the US.
As it's a synthetic opioid, it's not something that can be easily made by even the most skilled chemist, as seen with meth in the "Breaking Bad" TV series.
I realize a lot of it is coming here from other countries, but it is still manufactured by professional pharmaceutical companies, and not by some guy in a hidden basement/building somewhere cooking it up from chemicals that can be easily ordered from chemical supply companies; since it's street value is far higher than it's pharmacy prices, some executives, IMO both here in the US and outside countries, are making a personal fortune on street sales, as it continues to kill countless people each day.
 
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@Siobhan - Oh I get the difference, I'm supposed to be on pain meds for chronic pain. Signed the contract and all. I HATE the way they make me feel. I just stopped. I'd rather have pain then spend all day every day on the verge of puking. Marijuana helps a great deal for me though. CBD for work, a combo for not work.

I wish I didn't have to use them at all, but unfortunately I went over 30 years without a full diagnosis, and unbeknownst to me had actually ruptured the discs between L4-L5-S1 at age 20, and also didn't realize that truthfully telling my 1st insurance company afterwards (at age 21) that I had undiagnosed low back pain would put me on a permanent "flag", and they would only cover X-rays if I presented myself to an ER.
Back in that time, an MRI was 10k out of pocket, and an financial impossibility for me.

It wasn't until about 8 years after intermittent bouts of nerve impingement that it went full blown and never alleviated, when we were able to find an MRI facility that only charged me $400.00, and it became obvious that I'd been bone on bone for decades, and had extensive osteoarthritic deposits/spurs and stenosis that had completely occluded at least 2 major nerves (including sciatic) on my left and right spinal sides. The impingement caused further nerve damage to where I still have "dead zones" in the flanks of my hips, hamstrings, lower legs and feet where the only sensation I have is numbness, with pain also in the lower back/legs and feet.
Had I'd had insurance when I first developed the pain (not sure what happened, woke one AM in severe pain and couldn't straighten my back), and had gotten immediate treatment, I would probably not still have pain and the osteoarthritis/bone spur issues I have to be monitored for even now.
One thing I did learn was that this is probably genetic for me, as my paternal grandfather, my dad's brother and sister, as well as my maternal grandmother all had degenerative disc disease, and all had had a minimum of 6 (each, my aunt had 11!) fusion surgeries themselves during their lifetimes.
Due to this, the main thing I have to take care with is the way I move (shoulders and hips must stay aligned at all times), and am prohibited from lifting more than 20 lbs and from lifting anything (even a window) that's at arms length extension from my body to prevent any type of disc injury above my surgical area.

I wish our pharmaceutical companies would invest in developing non-opioid patches that patients could wear over the affected pain areas that reach beyond just the skin and outer muscles, and aid to alleviate deep nerve pain at only the areas where pain relief is necessary.

Our state just started allowing medical marijuana about 2 years ago, but patients are not allowed to smoke it, and it's very difficult to get a MMJ patients card unless you go to a DR. who does only MMJ prescriptions - which, IMO, isn't much different than going to a pill-mill type of Dr. and even those patients may eventually have their MMJ prescription cards revoked if the state decides that the Dr.'s writing the MMJ prescriptions are "suspect" in any way.
IMO, it's long past time to just decriminalize it across the nation, and make room for new jobs and business all over the country for the MMJ and personal use industry.
 
He just filed to run for President!

Yep, been following him. He made it clear that was his intent almost immediately after he lost his WV election.

Wouldnt mind seeing a Beto/Ojeda ticket

Think a Biden/Beto is more likely though. Then again, be shocked if everyone, Biden included, doesnt decide he's just too damn old. Think hell be pushin 80 come 2020. Dont care how sharp someone is at that age, it can all change in a day, unfortunately.

Democrats are stupid enough to force some high profile, polarizing figure into the mix and down Americas throat again though, repeat of 2016 all over again. Dipshits.
 
Obviously, it starts with the drug manufacturer/pharma company whose sales reps push the product to doctors and pharmacies. Everyone in this supply chain is greedy and cares only about the profits including most of the physicians. Along with that the American people are indoctrinated to accept whatever authority figures, including doctors, say and I don't think this has changed significantly in recent years. That makes us, the American people, vulnerable to abuse. It would be nice if people would wake up and begin to take some responsibility themselves.

But its abuse and greed and indoctrination just like you said though. I feel lucky that when i was an addict, cocaine was my drug of choice because, these are really dangerous drugs ... starting them can kill you ... stopping them ... can also kill you.
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@Siobhan - Oh I get the difference, I'm supposed to be on pain meds for chronic pain. Signed the contract and all. I HATE the way they make me feel. I just stopped. I'd rather have pain then spend all day every day on the verge of puking. Marijuana helps a great deal for me though. CBD for work, a combo for not work.

I had an professor in college who had foot surgery, had to wear the special shoes ... she had chronic condition, chronic pain and she wore fentynal patches, and used it as a teaching tool. She was a walking, talking example of someone who was using fentynal and opiates for their intended use, and as prescribed. Its the opiates on the street and a society self medicates is where the crisis really is.
 
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On top of being T-boned by a dump truck, and multiple car accidents (I was not the driver in all but one and that was getting rear ended at a dead stop on the freeway by a car going 45+/-) I also have Juvenile Pernicious Anemia. I don't absorb or store B12. You need B12 to produce myelin to protect your nerve endings. I too have constant nerve pain and "dead spots". I truly feel for you. I'm very lucky marijuana is totally legal here in Oregon. ;)

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that, autoimmune disorders are rough as hell, and sometimes (not unlike cancers), the medications can wreck more havoc on your body than the illness itself. Mrs. Sio has Lupus, RA, and Schroegren's syndrome, and can get so sick and run down from the medications, it breaks my heart to see.
Also another area where our medical research pharmaceutical companies need to do far more specialized work, as it seems there's often a handful of the same medications used to treat most autoimmune disorders, and from what I've seen with so many patients is that a "these pills treat all" approach isn't working as well as a specialized approach probably would for each different autoimmune disorder/disease.
 
I can maybe manage half of a Vicodin 10/375 without getting sick. To me that much is unimaginable!
When you start taking this shit on the regular - it was like me taking Meth.. Clean everything - always on the move.. Your chemistry changes.. Unfortunately at one point in my life 10 to 15 a day was normal.. Help me work two full time jobs.. Raise a family and deal with chronic illness fatigue and pain.
 
@Siobhan - Sorry to hear about Mrs Sio, my mom has four of them herself. I can't remember them all, but Pernicious Anemia and Graves disease are two of them. Retaining potassium is part of one of them. She's always getting Charley horse's. I'm starting to too. Yippee, another problem! :rolleyes: At various times she and I have been part of studies they're doing at OHSU just because of the hereditary aspect, and why is she just PA while I'm JPA. Excitingly, another member here had a fabulous idea the she (Mom) will present at her next appointment, next week. Until then I won't go into detail, this member does deserve all credit, but I have high hopes. :joyful:

Wishing everything goes excellent at your mom's next appointment!
 
Years ago I dabbled with some Lortabs (hydrocodone) but didn't like them. The build up in tolerance was pretty crazy. The feeling I got from a 5, if I wanted that again the next day I had to take a 10. I just said no and didn't mess with them. A lot of people I know did, and I remember them telling me that after not very long they were no longer taking then for any high, just kept taking them to not get sick (withdrawal).

As for the fentanyl that is coming from China and Mexico now. You can order it on the "dark web" pretty easy. It used to only be on those time release patches but pretty quickly druggies found that if you froze the patch the fentanyl would separate out.
 
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