Conspiracy Between Pharma, Doctors, And Govt Fuels WV Opioid Crisis

The Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail has a fascinating two part series on the opioid epidemic that has swept through the state in recent years. The report shows that in six years, pharmaceutical companies flooded the state with over 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills. That comes to 130 million pills per year. The town of Kermit, West Virginia, has a population of 932 but a single pharmacy in that town received over 4.5 million pills per year over a two year period. In the town of Oceana, a pharmacy received 600 times more oxycodone pills as another pharmacy literally just down the street. The population of the entire state of West Virginia is about 1.83 million and the number of pills delivered to the state amount to over 430 for every single individual in the state.

The three big prescription drug wholesalers, the oligopoly of McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen Drug Company, accounted for over half of the pills delivered to the state. Of course, these companies obviously had willing accomplices in the pharmacies and doctors in West Virginia. And the drug wholesalers use that fact to absolve themselves from any responsibility for the resulting opioid epidemic in the state. According to McKesson General Counsel John Saia, "The two roles that interface directly with the patient — the doctors who write the prescriptions and the pharmacists who fill them — are in a better position to identify and prevent the abuse and diversion of potentially addictive controlled substance." Of course, the drug wholesalers made billions from these sales and their salespeople and CEOs were handsomely rewarded. Even more damning is the fact that the potency of the pills provide by these companies increased as time went on, as the people they had managed to get addicted required more and more potent doses to get their high. The company had to see the pattern of addiction they were feeding. By law, they were required to report suspicious orders to the state Board of Pharmacy, but the drug companies simply ignored that requirement. When the West Virginia Attorney General finally filed lawsuits forcing the companies to report these obviously excessive orders, the Board of Pharmacy simply did nothing with them, allowing the pills to keep flooding into the state.

The drug companies had plenty of willing and greedy accomplices in the pharmacies and doctors in the state, as well as from the state regulators that were supposed to monitor them. According to the article, the Board of Pharmacy gave "spotless inspection reviews to small-town pharmacies in the southern counties that ordered more pills than could possibly be taken by people who really needed medicine for pain." Of course, every one of the prescriptions that were filled at these pharmacies were written by a doctor.

Many of you are too young to remember the days when the CIA was accused of running drugs into the United States in order to fund its illegal wars in Central America under Ronald Reagan. Although it has never been "proved", there is substantial evidence that supports that claim. A controversial series in the San Jose Mercury News further alleged that the CIA was complicit in the introduction of crack cocaine in the United States as part of the operation to support those wars in Central America. For many Americans, these allegation seemed beyond belief. They seem much more believable now when you see the drug companies, pharmacists, doctors, and the state bureaucracy all complicit in creating a addiction epidemic in West Virginia. The cost of that addiction and the deaths from overdosing is incalculable. But none of the powers involved cared one whit about the people of West Virginia. Every one involved in what is essentially a massive criminal enterprise was only interested in lining their own pocket. And you can be sure that there are plenty of other states where a similar pattern of abuse has occurred.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin's response to these events was to say, "We need to declare a war on drugs." Yes, that has worked so well for the last 40 years. Rather than sticking all those poor souls who have become addicted due to a conspiracy among the government and the medical establishment in jail, we really ought to be looking to prosecute the people responsible for getting them addicted in the first place. We really ought to be declaring "war on the drug companies and their accomplices" like Mylan, headed by Manchin's daughter, that exploits its monopoly position to price gouge people who desperately need the life-saving drug it provides. It is hard to imagine how many people are in jail today for marijuana infractions and then look at the fact that virtually everyone involved in this massive crime not only walks around freely today but are also handsomely rewarded for their crime. Please read both parts of the Gazette-Mail's report. You will be shocked and disgusted.