Report: Over 10 million prescription pain pills distributed in Portage County over seven-year span
By Joe Bachman
Multimedia Editor
PORTAGE COUNTY — From 2006 to 2012, over 10 million prescription pain pills were supplied to Portage County residents, according to a recently released database.
Records kept by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have been released in a Washington Post database that reveals the location and usage of pain pills in America. According to the Washington Post article, DEA statistics have calculated over 76 billion pills, mainly oxycodone (OxyContin®), and hydrocodone (Vicodin®), were distributed in a seven-year span nationwide.
According to the compiled data, from 2006 to 2012 there have been an accounted 10,101,860 prescription pain pills supplied to Portage County. Out of these, 5,110,700 were manufactured by SpecGx LLC, and 3,468,330 were distributed by the McKesson Corporation.
The Church Street Walgreens pharmacy in Stevens Point received the highest number of pills.
According to the latest reports from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), opiods were involved in over two-thirds of overdose deaths in 2017. As of 2017, 926 overdose deaths were recorded in the state of Wisconsin, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The same summary states that Wisconsin providers wrote 52.6 opiod prescriptions for every 100 persons.
From 2000-2016, 79 people suffered fatal overdoses from opiods in Portage County.
