PHILADELPHIA _ A decade ago, as opioid painkillers fueled a growing addiction crisis across the nation, Philadelphia stood out as one of the most ravenous consumers of the most potent pill on the market: OxyContin's 80-milligram payload of the drug oxycodone.
Rural states had been OxyContin's beachhead after it was introduced, but by 2009, pharmacies in Philadelphia and its suburbs ordered the Purdue Pharma drug at a rate twice that of West Virginia, and higher than nearly anywhere else in the nation.
Philadelphia's peak came two years after Purdue admitted in court that it falsely claimed its extended-release pill was safer and less addictive than other opioids.
Then the company reformulated the drug in August 2010 into an "abuse-deterrent" OxyContin: one that, when crushed, turned to a gummy mush instead of a fine powder, keeping users from snorting or injecting the drug to get its high all at once.
Across the nation, OxyContin sales dropped slightly, indicating that while some customers preferred the crushable drug, most patients accepted the safer formulation. But in Philadelphia, sales dropped four times faster than the rest of the country _ a red flag that the drug had been widely abused here.
Philadelphia pharmacies that were the biggest orderers of the crushable drug cut their orders significantly _ or almost completely.
A Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of the Drug Enforcement Administration's records of shipments of OxyContin and other controlled substances between 2006 and 2012 brings to light, for the first time, the Philadelphia retailers buying the drug _ and how much of it was likely being abused.
The consequences are being felt to this day. When the supply of crushable OxyContin dried up, many users turned to Philadelphia's cheap and plentiful heroin to slake their opioid addiction.
In Philadelphia, overdose deaths involving heroin increased at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the nation. Last year, Philadelphia saw 1,116 people die from overdoses, the worst drug crisis of any large city in the nation.
"You can draw a straight line to the death and destruction we're seeing on the streets of Kensington today and the decision made in the boardroom at Purdue Pharmaceutical and other companies," said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Shapiro has joined Pennsylvania with 23 states in filing a lawsuit against members of the billionaire Sackler family, which owns Purdue. The company itself is now in bankruptcy proceedings, brought on by enormous settlements with local governments over allegations Purdue helped ignite today's opioid epidemic _ one that is playing out with horrific cost in Philadelphia.
