Over a seven-year period, more than 99 million prescription pain pills were supplied to Santa Barbara County residents, according to federal drug database information acquired by The Washington Post and the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail newspapers through court action.
From 2006 to 2012, there were 99,272,802 prescription pain pills supplied to Santa Barbara County, which is enough for 34 pills per person (per year), according to the data.
The pills primarily were formulations of oxycodone and hydrocodone.
The county is relatively low on the per-capita distribution rate, at 34 pills per person, when the national range is five to more than 150 per capita, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System.
Santa Barbara County has an estimated population of 446,527, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures, and had a population of 423,895 in 2010.
Drug- and alcohol-related deaths nearly doubled in Santa Barbara County between 2005 and 2009, to 111 from 60, with the sheriff’s Coroner’s Office finding the presence of prescription drugs in the systems of more and more victims.
Coroner’s Office data from that time period revealed morphine, a prescription medication, to be the most prominent drug found in the systems of fatal overdose victims, second only to methamphetamine.
The issue of overprescribing was underscored by the 2012 arrest and conviction of former Santa Barbara physician Julio Diaz, who was linked to 11 patient overdose deaths and more than 400 drug-related emergency room visits in a two-year period. Numerous physicians and family members of patients unsuccessfully filed complaints about him to the Medical Board of California in the decade before his arrest on federal drug charges.
Several local pharmacists surrendered their licenses for filling Diaz’s prescriptions, while others reportedly had blacklisted him, refusing to fill any opioid orders from his office.
Recent records show the Coroner’s Office specifically tracking accidental deaths related to fentanyl (there were 11 in 2017) and a steady number of drug- and alcohol-related deaths with prescription medications.
In 2017, 27 of the 74 deaths specifically mention prescription medications. Thirteen of those were ruled to be suicides, according to Coroner’s Office reports.
Santa Barbara County’s drug- and alcohol-related deaths for the past eight years are 44 deaths in 2011, 49 in 2012, 49 in 2013, 59 in 2014, 75 in 2015, 72 in 2016, 74 in 2017, and 42 deaths in the first six months of 2018. All these numbers include deaths ruled accidents and suicides.
In the first six months of 2018, 13 of the 42 reported drug- and alcohol-related deaths were individuals under 35 years old.
The rates of drug overdose deaths continue to increase, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2017.
Opioids were involved in 67.8 percent of those deaths, and California is one of the states with “statistically significant increases in drug overdose death rates from 2016 to 2017,” according to the CDC.
Prescription Pain Pills and Santa Barbara County
The recently released DEA database information includes the most prolific pharmacies, distributors and manufacturers by county.
Locally, the top five pharmacies for prescription pain pills for 2006-2012 were:
» Pain Management Pharmacy Inc., 2003 S. Miller St. in Santa Maria: 5.707 million pills
» Vons, 729 N. H St. in Lompoc: 4.052 million pills
» Walgreens, 937 N. H St. in Lompoc: 3.977 million pills
» Sansum Clinic Pharmacy in Santa Barbara: 3.929 million pills
» Walgreens in Santa Maria: 3.594 million pills
The top distributors for Santa Barbara County were:
» AmerisourceBergen Drug: 30.551 million pills
» McKesson Corp.: 19.207 million pills
» Walgreens: 11.494 million pills
» Cardinal Health: 7.596 million pills
» Thrifty Payless Inc.: 7.154 million pills
The top manufacturers for Santa Barbara County were:
» Actavis Pharma Inc.: 37.989 million pills
» SpecGx LLC: 33.860 million pills
» Par Pharmaceutical: 14.551 million pills
» Purdue Pharma LP: 3.894 million pills
» Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC: 2.960 million pills
Nationally, three companies manufactured about 88 percent of the opioids in that time frame: SpecGx, a subsidiary of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, with 37.7 percent of the market; Actavis Pharma Inc., with 34.5 percent of the market; and Par Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals, with 15.7 percent of the market, according to the data compiled by The Post.
The data also revealed that six companies distributed 75 percent of the pills in that time period, including the top four distributors to Santa Barbara County.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.