Here's How Many Pain Pills Rockville Pharmacies Receive

ROCKVILLE, MD — A new report shows billions of painkillers flowed through nearly 83,000 pharmacies across the country, including many in Rockville. A previously unreleased database managed by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration logged where roughly 70 billion pills containing oxycodone and hydrocodone were shipped to, The Washington Post reported last week.

While the database doesn't specify what happened after the pharmacies received the shipments, it does illuminate the sheer number of pills that flooded communities. The data includes numbers from 2006 to 2012, The Post reported. Chain and retail pharmacies were included.

The database said 38 pharmacies within five miles of Rockville received 21,250,060 pills from 2006 to 2012.

Here's what the database found for the individual pharmacies:

CVS Pharmacy
9920 Key West Ave.
Pills received: 1,527,090

Giant Food - Pharmacy
2401 Wootton Parkway
Pills received: 350,330

Ambulatory Care Pharmacy
9601 Blackwell Rd.
Pills received: 4,281,820

Giant Food - Pharmacy
9719 Traville Gateway Dr.
Pills received: 296,430

Safeway - Pharmacy
14939 Shady Grove Rd.
Pills received: 431,700

Ambulatory Care Pharmacy
9715 Medical Center Dr.
Pills received: 552,900

Shady Grove Pharmacy
15225 Shady Grove Rd.
Pills received: 263,940

Giant Food - Pharmacy
625 Hungerford Dr.
Pills received: 715,760

Kaiser Permanente
1396 Piccard Dr.
Pills received: 625,800

Safeway - Pharmacy
403 Redland Ave.
Pills received: 449,720

CVS Pharmacy
360 Hungerford Dr.
Pills received: 1,090,900

Giant Food - Pharmacy
16837 Crabbs Branch Way
Pills received: 524,740

Safeway Pharmacy
5510 Norbeck Rd.
Pills received: 345,000

CVS Pharmacy
5560 Norbeck Rd.
Pills received: 759,100

Walgreens
1075 Seven Locks Rd.
Pills received: 321,400

CVS Pharmacy
799 Rockville Pike
Pills received: 451,800

Food Lion - Pharmacy
845 Rockville Pike
Pills received: 763,530

Rockville Pharmacy Inc.
50 W. Edmonston Dr.
Pills received: 569,630

Tenley Professional Pharmacy
50 W. Edmonston Dr.
Pills received: 54,300

*More pharmacies can be found on The Post's interactive map.

Five pharmacies in Kentucky, Illinois, Idaho, and Kansas received the most painkillers per person each year, The Post found. With a total of nearly 6.8 million pills, Shearer Drug in Clinton County, Kentucky, saw the most pills per person per year at 96.

Areas deluged with pain pills saw far higher death rates related to opioids, The Post found. While the national rate was 4.6 deaths per 100,000 residents, counties that received the most pain pills per person saw rates that were more than three times higher.

Perhaps the most startling finding was that just 15 percent of pharmacies received nearly half of the pain pills.

According to the latest provisional data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States last year, a 5 percent decline from 2017. The agency predicted that number will rise to more than 680,000 once all data is reported to them.

In its previous report in July, The Post said 75 percent of the pills distributed in the seven-year period came from six companies with pharmacies: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, and Walmart. Four other companies were identified by the paper as being among the top 10 distributors of opioids: Smith Drug Co., Rite Aid, Kroger, and H.D. Smith.

Patch national staffers Dan Hampton and Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this report.