WDTN | BJ Bethel
Pharmaceutical companies dispersed approximately 415 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills in the Miami Valley from 2006 to 2012, according to data released by the Washington Post from the Drug Enforcement Agency.
In Montgomery County, the total was 175 million.
The report was part of a longterm Washington Post investigation of the pain pill epidemic in the United States.
According to the database, over 3.4 billion pills were distributed in Ohio during the same time period. The fallout from oxycontin and the opioid epidemic led to the Ohio Attorney General’s office filing a lawsuit against five pharmaceutical companies in 2017.
Current Ohio AG Dave Yost believes the database and numbers further support Ohio’s lawsuit against five top pharmaceutical companies.
“The sheer volume of opiates going into some communities should have triggered alarms, flashing lights and flares — Yet these companies took no action until the number of overdose deaths spiraled out of control,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told 2 NEWS in a statement. “Ohio’s lawsuit asks the people who created this mess to pay for cleaning it up.”