By Chris Hawley
NEW YORK —
Sales of the nation’s two most popular prescription painkillers have exploded in new parts of the country, an Associated Press analysis shows, worrying experts who say the push to relieve patients’ suffering is spawning an addiction epidemic.
From New York’s Staten Island to Santa Fe, N.M., Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) figures show dramatic rises between 2000 and 2010 in the distribution of oxycodone, the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan. Some places saw sales increase sixteenfold.
Meanwhile, the distribution of hydrocodone, the key ingredient in Vicodin, Norco and Lortab, is rising in Appalachia, the original epicenter of the painkiller epidemic, as well as in the Midwest.
The increases have coincided with a wave of overdose deaths, pharmacy robberies and other problems in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Florida and other states. Opioid pain relievers, the category that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, caused 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008 alone, and the death toll is rising, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Nationwide, pharmacies received and ultimately dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone in 2010, the last year for which statistics are available. That’s enough to give 40 5-mg Percocets and 24 5-mg Vicodins to every person in the United States. The DEA data records shipments from distributors to pharmacies, hospitals, practitioners and teaching institutions. The drugs are eventually dispensed and sold to patients, but the DEA does not keep track of how much individual patients receive.
The increase is partly due to the aging U.S. population with pain issues and a greater willingness by doctors to treat pain, said Gregory Bunt, medical director at New York’s Daytop Village chain of drug treatment clinics.
Sales are also being driven by addiction, as users become physically dependent on painkillers and begin “doctor shopping” to keep the prescriptions coming, he said.
“Prescription medications can provide enormous health and quality-of-life benefits to patients,” Gil Kerlikowske, the U.S. drug czar, told Congress in March. “However, we all now recognize that these drugs can be just as dangerous and deadly as illicit substances when misused or abused.”
Opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone can release intense feelings of well being. Some abusers swallow the pills; others crush them, then smoke, snort or inject the powder.
The AP analysis used drug data collected quarterly by the DEA’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System. The DEA tracks shipments sent from distributors to pharmacies, hospitals, practitioners and teaching institutions and then compiles the data using three-digit ZIP codes. Every ZIP code starting with 100-, for example, is lumped together into one figure.
The AP combined this data with census figures to determine effective sales per capita.
A few ZIP codes that include military bases or Veterans Affairs hospitals have seen large increases in painkiller use because of soldier patients injured in the Middle East, law enforcement officials say. In addition, small areas around St. Louis, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and Newark, N.J., have seen their totals affected because mail-order pharmacies have shipping centers there, said Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.
Many of the sales trends stretch across bigger areas.
In Florida, the AP analysis underscores the difficulty of the state’s decade-long battle against “pill mills,” unscrupulous doctors who churn out dozens of prescriptions a day.
In 2000, Florida’s oxycodone sales were centered around West Palm Beach. By 2010, oxycodone was flowing to nearly every part of the state.
While still not as high as in Appalachia or Florida, oxycodone sales also increased dramatically in New York City and its suburbs. The borough of Staten Island saw sales leap 1,200 percent.
New York’s Long Island has also seen huge increases. The American Southwest has emerged as another hot spot. — AP
