From the The Exponent Telegram of Clarksburg:
Thanks to government lawsuits and the persistence of several major newspapers, the latest release of information on the opioid crisis has now been made public. And it is stunning.
The information on drugs shipped across the country from 2006 to 2012 shows a pharmaceutical industry that churned opioids out at a breakneck pace in spite of a growing list of overdose deaths.
The data comes from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Order System (ARCOS). The DEA is required to keep track of the distribution of opioids, otherwise known as controlled substances. At first the DEA agreed to hand over the data, but only to lawyers, not the cities and counties suing or to the public at large.
Newspapers such as The Washington Post, the Huntington Herald Dispatch, the Charleston Gazette-Mail and five other publications in West Virginia went to court to have the data made public. …
