PORT ANGELES – Shocking new data pertaining to opioid pill distribution in every county in the US has been obtained and published by the Washington Post. The data shows that from 2006 to 2012, Clallam County had not only the greatest density of pill prescriptions per capita in Washington state, but among the highest in the nation.
The newspaper was part of a year-long court battle to obtain the data from the Drug Enforcement Administration, which they used to create an opioid distribution database, published this month.
It shows that in that six-year period, our county of 76,000 residents received 37.8 million prescription pain pills. They were sold to patients at a rate of more than 76 pills per person per year.
The general consensus among health officials and regulators is that opioid manufacturers under-stated to doctors how addictive the drugs are, who in turn tended to over-prescribe them to patients, many of whom became addicted to the pills and often moved on to heroin, which is easily available and much cheaper, when their prescriptions ran out.
Clallam County and the state of Washington are currently suing various opioid manufacturers for negligence in an effort to try and recover some of the funds taxpayers have spent as a result of rampant opiate addiction in their communities.
Clallam County Health officials have posted data on their website, collected since 2010, that illustrates some of the effects and trends of opiate addiction. County Health Officer Allison Berry-Unthank acknowledges the problems are bad but getting better since doctors have cut back on the number of opioid prescriptions they write, and programs and policies continue to improve.
“We’ve struggled with our opiate problem in the community for quite some time. We’ve historically had some of the highest rates of opiate use and overdose in the state, but we’ve been making a lot of headway in turning that around. One of the big ways we’ve been doing that is by getting people access to these overdose medications and getting them access to treatment.”
While the number of overdoses and deaths appear to have peaked in 2016 and have since dropped dramatically, partially due to the increased use of naloxone, a drug that can quickly reverse the effects of an overdose, there is plenty of evidence that shows the number of people addicted to opiates is still very high in Clallam County.
Photo: Detail of County chart on opioid data. See link.