THE LAST WEEK IN REVIEW
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JULY 17-24, 2019 COMPILED BY SASHA GOLDSTEIN, MATTHEW ROY & ANDREA SUOZZO
DATA DIVE O
pioid manufacturers and distributors purchased 119,480,773 doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone in Vermont during the seven-year period that ended in 2012. That works out to be 191 pills for every man, woman and child in the Green Mountain State. The figures come from a database released last week by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration detailing prescription opioid purchases from 2006 through 2012. The data set offers an unprecedented view of the pharmaceutical industry’s business dealings in relation to the opioid crisis. Vermont purchases of oxycodone, aka OxyContin, and hydrocodone peaked in 2011 at 18.2 million pills. That same year, medical providers wrote 502,566 prescriptions for opioids in a state with a population of just under 627,000. The DEA released the data set, which contains hundreds of millions of opioid transactions, as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Washington Post and the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia. Last Thursday, the Post published raw data detailing 380 million oxycodone and hydrocodone transactions. The Post did not include data on 10 other prescribed opioids distributed in smaller amounts that were considered less likely to be diverted for abuse.
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KEVIN MCCALLUM
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Parking lot at GreenSpark
A Wave of Opioid Pills Swept Into Vermont
The data shed light on the market during a critical point in the opioid crisis. In 2006, OxyContin and other prescription opioids surpassed illicit heroin as the drug for which most people sought treatment for addiction, according to the Vermont Department of Health. Nationally, the number of opioid prescriptions peaked in 2012, when doctors wrote the equivalent of 81.3 prescriptions for every 100 U.S. residents. The top distributor of opioid pills in the state between 2006 and 2012 was McKesson Corporation. The San Franciscobased pharmaceutical distributor sold just over 40 million pills to Vermont-based buyers during that time — nearly twice as many as the next largest distributor, Cardinal Health. The top manufacturer of those pills was SpecGx, a subsidiary of UK pharma giant Mallinckrodt, which manufactured nearly 49 million of the pills Vermont-based companies purchased. Though Purdue Pharma has been the focus of many of the headlines — and lawsuits — over its role in the opioid crisis, it supplied just 5.1 percent of the oxycodone and hydrocodone pills tallied in the database. Check out data editor Andrea Suozzo’s complete report, and keep up with news about the opioid crisis at sevendaysvt.com.
RACE TO THE BOTTOM
The Rutland-area NAACP held an event called How to Talk to Your Racist Neighbor. That’s one way to start the conversation.
SEEING SPOTS?
Several Addison County towns near Otter Creek have been overrun with northern leopard frogs. Experts blame wet weather, not a biblical plague.
UN-BEAR-ABLE
Authorities had to euthanize a bear that twice broke into an Underhill home and ate maple syrup, cheese, grapes and bread. A fitting final meal for a Vermont bruin.
ACQUISITION AVALANCHE
Vail Resorts, owner of Stowe and Okemo ski areas, is adding Mount Snow to its portfolio. Colorado comes east.
$1.85M That’s how much the state will get from Equifax as part of a $600 million settlement. A 2017 data breach exposed the data of millions in the U.S., including an estimated 250,000 Vermonters.
TOPFIVE
MOST POPULAR ITEMS ON SEVENDAYSVT.COM
1. “Toxic Algae Bloom in Private Vermont Pond Kills Dog, Puppy” by Derek Brouwer. The June deaths are the first in Vermont since 2000 to be officially linked to cyanobacteria. 2. “CityPlace Architect Says Mall Project Will Be Redesigned” by Courtney Lamdin. After a closed-door executive session, one of the project’s consulting architects announced that the plans for the development would change. 3. “Developer: CityPlace Burlington Project Will Be Redesigned” by Kevin McCallum. Last Friday, Brookfield Asset Management confirmed that the CityPlace project is on hold pending a redesign. 4. “On Target? Axe Throwing Venue to Open in Burlington’s Old North End” by Courtney Lamdin. Burly Axe Throwing will open on North Winooski Avenue as soon as next month. 5. “Workers Remove Crane From Site of Long-Stalled CityPlace Project” by Sasha Goldstein. For the first time in months, there was movement at the CityPlace construction site — but only as workers disassembled and removed a crane.
tweet of the week @foundbeautyvt Dude wearing cargo pants, riding a large motorcycle, and blasting “Boys of Summer” at 9am on a Monday so loudly that I heard 2 verses as you rode down my street and sat at the red light, I salute you for living your truth. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @SEVENDAYSVT OUR TWEEPLE: SEVENDAYSVT.COM/TWITTER
WHAT’S WEIRD IN VERMONT
NO GREEN IN ‘GREEN’ A
Vermont endeavor billed as the nation’s first sustainability park is proving difficult to maintain. The GreenSpark Sustainability Park, which opened in a field along Route 100 in Waterbury Center in late 2017, is struggling to convince people to pay $12 to visit its quirky collection of green technologies. The park had fewer than 100 visitors last year, its first full year of operation, and has yet to open for the 2019 season. Cofounder Alex Chernomazov still believes in his vision for an interactive outdoor museum showcasing ways to reduce energy consumption. The network engineer admits
the attraction, which includes a wood-powered car and a sail-powered tricycle, hasn’t exactly caught fire. During a recent visit to the park, weeds covered the gravel parking lot and paths between the shipping containers in which the exhibits are stored. Chernomazov said interest hasn’t been strong enough to justify staffing it full time, suggesting the park may still be so new that word has yet to spread. “It could just be a matter of inertia,” Chernomazov said. It’s also possible that green technologies such as electric cars, solar water heaters and geothermal cooling are becoming so commonplace that people aren’t willing to pay to see them. Chernomazov doesn’t think that’s the
issue, noting that many parts of the country have yet to embrace green technologies. He and his wife, former Cabot science teacher Ella Malamud, plan to try operating the park on an appointment-only basis. Many of last year’s visitors were out-of-staters who had arranged their visits to the park after spotting it online, so Chernomazov’s hopeful that the on-demand model will work. If not, he and Malamud might need to either find volunteers to help out or another organization with which to partner, he said. The success of the venture was never going to be measured in huge profits, he noted: “It’s never been about becoming a second Google, obviously.” KEVIN MCCALLUM SEVEN DAYS JULY 24-31, 2019
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