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Bipartisan E&C Leaders Continue Investigation into Alleged Pill Dumping in West Virginia, Press DEA for More Information

October 14, 2017

Bipartisan committee leaders sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Friday, continuing its ongoing investigation into the unusually large opioid presence in the state of West Virginia.

The letter was signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-CO).

The October 13 letter follows an initial series of letters sent in May to the country's top three drug distributors (AmerisourceBergen Corporation, CardinalHealth, and McKesson Corporation) and the DEA, and a September letter probing a fourth distributor, Miami-Luken.

While the committee has yet to receive a complete response to its May letter to the DEA, the committee's investigation continued by examining DEA's publicly available data, including their Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS).

"The data appears to show a considerable increase in the amount of hydrocodone and oxycodone that wholesale distributors provided to these locations over several years," write Walden, Pallone, McKinley, and DeGette. "For example, in 2005, distributors supplied 57,000 grams of oxycodone to these areas overall. By 2012, that amount appears to have doubled to nearly 117,000 grams, according to ARCOS data. Similarly, the amount of hydrocodone shipped to these areas appears to show a 60 percent increase in just three years: from 102,000 grams in 2005 to 164,000 grams in 2008. Such dramatic increases in the supply of these drugs do not seem to be explained by usual market forces. For example, hydrocodone had been in existence for decades by the time these trends began. Demographic changes also do not seem to adequately account for these increases in supply, as West Virginia's population rose just 2.5 percent between 2000 and 2010."

The leaders continued, "Viewed independently, individual data from each area in some cases appears even more egregious. In the northern West Virginia region contained within ZIP code prefix 265, for example, the distribution of hydrocodone and oxycodone appears to have increased nearly every year across a decade. The amount of oxycodone that wholesalers distributed more than doubled between 2005 and 2015."

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports today, "The panel found that the amount of hydrocodone shipped to the Mingo-Logan zip code area increased by 600 percent over eight years. Meanwhile, oxycodone shipments to Wyoming and McDowell counties doubled over a five-year span, according to the panel's analysis of DEA data. Prescription opioid shipment amounts tripled in other parts of the state, the committee found."