For the five year period between 2006 and 2012, Manor Pharmacy in New Castle purchased nearly 10 million pills of opioid drugs, according to the News Journal through the Washington Post. That is 10 times the number of people in the whole state, let alone in the small town of New Castle.
This kind of disclosure reveals the true villains of the opioid epidemic in this country: prescribing doctors and drug companies.
Manor Pharmacy is not alone. From the News Journal:
From 2006 through 2012, nearly 300 million painkillers were shipped into Delaware according to a Drug Enforcement Administration database published this week by The Washington Post. If those 276,177,276 pills were distributed equally, that would be 286 pills for every Delawarean.
The data set, known as ARCOS, tracks the journey of every single prescription painkiller in the United States, starting with the manufacturer that produced it all the way to the pharmacy that purchased it. The data offers an unprecedented view of the rise in sales of prescription painkillers that fueled the opioid epidemic.
Such an increase in the availability of the prescription painkillers resulted in an 400% increase in opioid overdoses resulting in death. Yeah, may those who opposed the Opioid tax this past session burn in Hell.
Worked in a pain management clinic for 6 hellish months, learned a lot about the pills, the patients and the doctors who prescribe the pills. Opioids are hyper abundant, the doctors prescribe them unto excess, many times when a simple NSAID drug would have done the job. They also hand them out by the hundreds, not uncommon for the patients to receive in excess of 100 pills at a time. That and the patients themselves sell their excess to their friends. There are two cases moving forward in Ohio that threaten to expose the whole racket and the incredibly greedy people behind it. As for Manor Pharmacy don’t rule out a criminal conspiracy, it has happened in many other states.
What mystery? 23 million pills in 3 “independent” shops in working class communities. This is how it is and how it has been. White collar trafficking. We aren’t on a scale with rural WV or KY but the misery this represents is devastating and is all “ok” because it was “legal” We are destroying ourselves!
Correct, West Virginia may be the champ of this sick game with pharmacies in tiny towns dishing out tens of thousands of pills. It’s pretty damn obvious what’s going on. Could it be because big money is being made off of this misery? Gee, I wonder…..
And who are the doctors writing all of these prescriptions? All told there’s more than 200 pills per Delawarean. That’s way too much.
I find this really hard to believe about Manor Pharmacy because my husband has stomach cancer that was diagnosed Feb this year, which is extremely painful. When he was prescribed a low dose morphine, it was impossible to find any of the above pharmacies that had it in stock. When we went to Manor Pharmacy, they wouldn’t even fill it for him. The Pharmacist/Owner specifically told me that the drug companies they are each supplied by only allows each pharmacy a certain number of narcotic pills based on their current customer’ prescribed prescriptions quantity’s given by doctors. He also said that there was no way to even contact the supplier and make any additions to what they get monthly from their supplier. Therefore, Manor Pharmacy has been around for 30+ years with a large loyal customer base with many of their customers that are up in age dealing with many chronic & painful diseases which I am sure makes their numbers seem much higher than other pharmacies that haven’t been around nearly as long! Lastly, from my own experience & knowing many other chronic pain suffers that in the last 5 years it has become close to impossible to get any type of narcotics from physcian’s in Delaware once the regulations changed due to the overdoses in the state. Needless to say, the State of DE panicked and went from one extreme to another in handling the crisis which didn’t help the situation at all! Our state politicians & policy makers only made things worse because they don’t have the right knowledge & experience in this area so things were not thought through before enacting new regulations, and they know it so they are looking to blame someone!
The current regulations for the prescription of opioids may be annoying but they are well thought out and very necessary.
The dates of the study were 2006- 2012 . Now Delaware has done the right thing in the past 2 years and tightened the rules and cut the flow. Thus Manor and the other pill mills are cut off from their $$$ bonanza. What they did at that time is not disputable. The sad thing is that at that time nothing was done!
Let’s be real about manor. It’s not in the best neighborhood, however Jeff is very loyal to his regulars. If you are one he will hold your meds for you, turning away non-regs. This sounds unfair to some, but if your disability prevents you from driving to 17 pharmacies. The junkies that went around robbing pharms, forced the change of rules/laws and couldn’t get info over the phone. Making people like Jeff a huge stress reliever, your meds were there every month ready to go, and somehow that makes him and Manor some sort of pill mill. If it was in an upper class neighborhood , this story would have never even made the news.
“If it was in an upper class neighborhood , this story would have never even made the news.”
This shows a basic misunderstanding about the story. It was based on the numbers, nothing more, nothing less, so the neighborhood it’s in has nothing to do with it.
The store sold 2 MILLION pills a year for 5 years. Being nice to the regular customers, where the place is located are irrelevant. Bottom line underlying this is the Profit to the store. Giving a margin of just 10 cents a pill the owners realized a million bucks. The fact is this and all the rest of these places in Delaware and across the country trafficked in misery straight up!
I have had to take an opiod pain reliever for at least 10 years the government put a restriction on the amount of opiod pain reliever that a pharmacy could get at 1 time and then there was a battle the ones that need them to even be able to walk a bit or even move at all like me I could not get any for 3 months during that period and after being on them for 5 or 6 years I dont need to describe the havoc that played withdraws sickness and crippling pain
I would also like to add that manor pharmacy has been around for over50 years I remember my mom and dad getting their scripts filled there because I grew up right across the highway and I have used them in my earlier years but when my employer change health insurance every couple of years most of them would not allow me to use manor pharmacy because even though they got their premium they would not give them the discount they wanted and I also noticed the pharmacy I use is not on their list but I am in pain every day most of the day and the government wants to strip away the little bit of relief I get my doctor told me this fight would be coming and I know there are doctors that do or did prescribe opiods to people that did not need them as bad as some that do but instead of the government spending so much money on tracking what pharmacy sells the most pills they should check case by case for the crippled up bone desease having people like me just leave us alone they can go to work everyday and dont live in crippling pain everyday I have been on diability since 2012 and they acted like that was an honor and medicare doesnt pay for the pain meds anyway so leave me out of your issues
I appreciate the issue of chronic pain patients needing daily of opioids. However it is a rare occurrence. Typical need is a week to 10 days. but using 4 pills a day for a chronic pain patient that comes to 1500 pills a year. Manor’s volume of sales would have supplied 1,000 patients with that level of dosage over the 6 years. That simply is not medically possible. The facts are clear Manor has some ‘splaining to do about where the 10 million pills actually went!
This is a life and death issue. I have been to more funerals of young Delawareans than I care to think about!
@Joe: People on high doses of opioids or opiates are hooked on them without realizing it.
True