FOLLOW THE MONEY: DRUG FIRM DROPPED 3 MILLION OPIOIDS INTO KERMIT WV IN 10 MONTHS

(12/22/2018)

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. READ REST OF STORY Drug firm poured 3M opioids into WV town in just 10 months, report says By Eric Eyre Staff writer for the Charleston Gazette-Mail

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