The county where I live in Maine had more opioids prescribed per person than any other county in the Northeast.
The county where I live in Maine had more opioids prescribed per person than any other county in the Northeast.
The least you could do is share them with those less fortunate. And congrats!
interactive map where you can see the top counties.
Charleston County SC appears to be in the worst shape in the country. What’s going on there?
Charleston County SC appears to be in the worst shape in the country. What’s going on there?
The more I think about it the more I think in our case it’s really due to some confounding factors and not reflective of opioid abuse in the county per se. I live in a fairly large, mainly pretty rural county except for a small city of about 30k people that has two hospitals, one of which is the major hospital for all of northern/downeast Maine. IOW, it’s not all that surprising that a lot of opioids would be prescribed in the county because we contain the major medical services for a very large geographic part of the state.
The local papers have been running stories, one calling out the pharmacy that has handed out the most. Not surprisingly it’s the one closest to the big hospital.
No idea if something similar is going on in SC.
Charleston County SC appears to be in the worst shape in the country. What’s going on there?
I was a 911 paramedic in Charleston County from 1999-2010. We definitely did not have epidemic level opioid abuse, to the level of overdose, happening at that time. I guess the last decade hasn’t been kind to the Lowcountry.
Can we overlay a map of how much $$ doctors get from pharmaceutical companies?
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/06/30/maine-doctors-writing-fewer-opioid-prescriptions/
good thing it has reduced, just think how high your county must have been in 2013 or so…
The pharmacists and their companies will set up pill mills in states, sell a few million doses and when the heat gets too hot, move to another state that is complacent about the problem. The rogue pharmacists are nothing more than drug dealers with a license, and until the law enforcement community treats them as such, they will continue to prosper.
Kentucky chased one of those pill pushers out a few years ago, he moved to Tennessee and just recently was chased out of Tennessee for parts unknown. Alabama is pushing several of the dealers out of state and at least one has moved to Utah, which presumably will take a couple of years to find the problem and chase him out, rinse and repeat.