More than 152 million prescription, opioid pain pills were supplied to pharmacies in Southeast Missouri counties from 2006 through 2012, according to federal Drug Enforcement Administration data.

The data was obtained by and made available online by The Washington Post.

The Southeast Missourian reviewed the data on opioid pills supplied to pharmacies in 12 Southeast Missouri counties.

More than half of the pain pills to this region of Missouri were shipped to three counties: Cape Girardeau, Butler and Scott, the data show.

Butler County received more than 29.48 million opioid pills, enough for 99 pills per person per year; Cape Girardeau County, 28.48 million, enough for 55 pills per person per year; and Scott County, 22.05 million, enough for 79 pills per person per year.

Statewide, more than 1.5 billion prescription pain pills were supplied during that period, according to the online data.

State Rep. Holly Rehder, a Scott County Republican who has championed efforts to combat opioid addiction, said, “Those numbers are staggering.”

According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, one in three Missouri families is affected by the opioid crisis in some way.

A majority of states saw a decrease in overdose deaths between December 2017 and December 2018, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But Missouri is one of five states that experienced a 10% to 20% increase in overdose deaths, the CDC said.

“Missouri is one of just a few states that unfortunately is still going in the wrong direction,” Rehder said.

She blames some of the rise in overdose deaths in Missouri to the fact Missouri does not have a statewide drug monitoring program.

Rehder has tried unsuccessfully for years to have the Missouri Legislature pass such a program, which would establish a database so doctors and pharmacists could check on whether patients have obtained multiple prescriptions for the potent drugs.

Federal guidelines encouraged doctors to treat patients’ pains, and pharmaceutical companies were saying opioid drugs — oxycodone and hydrocodone — were not addictive, Rehder said.

“We just had more and more prescriptions being written,” she added. Patients became addicted to the drugs, Rehder said.

But because of the stigma surrounding addiction, “people hide it and they don’t talk about it,” she said.

“You still have so many people who treat it as a moral failing because they don’t really understand that now we have the medical science to show it is a disease,” Rehder said.

Ryan Essex, CEO of the Gibson Recovery Center in Cape Girardeau, said the opioid addiction problem has improved since the CDC issued new opioid-prescription guidelines.

Those guidelines include prescribing the drugs initially for no more than seven days.

“Before, there was no limitation on how long an initial opioid prescription could be,” Essex said.

But opioid addiction remains a problem, although there has been some improvement, said Essex, whose Gibson Center provides detoxification, residential and outpatient treatment services.

“Overdose deaths in Missouri are still rising, but they are not rising as rapidly as they once were,” he said.

In 2016, there were 908 opioid deaths in Missouri from legal and illegal opioids, most of them in the St. Louis area, Essex said.

People often become addicted to opioids after being prescribed pain pills after surgery or a broken bone or other ailment, according to Essex.

“It does not take long for a person’s body to become physically dependent on these medications,” he said. “A person can become addicted to opioids within seven to 10 days.”

Once the individual is taken off such medication, he or she often will buy prescription drugs on the street or “a lot of the time they end up buying heroin,” Essex said.

In many cases, he said, the heroin is laced with fentanyl, a highly dangerous opioid.

About 30% of Gibson Center clients are being treated for addiction to prescription opioids, heroin and fentanyl, according to Essex.

For addicts, “it is not about getting that pleasurable feeling anymore,” Essex said.

“Once a person’s body becomes dependent, you are no longer trying to feel good, but now you are just trying to not feel bad,” he said.

Essex said he isn’t looking to blame doctors for prescribing opioids.

“At this point, it doesn’t matter how we got here,” he said. “It only matters how we move forward, how are we treating them today, and preventing it from happening in the future.”

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Opioid prescriptions at a glance

Prescription opioids supplied to Southeast Missouri counties*

Bollinger: 2.59 million

Butler: 29.48 million,

Cape Girardeau: 28.48 million

Dunklin: 19.18 million

Mississippi: 6.66 million

New Madrid: 3.65 million

Pemiscot: 11.62 million

Perry: 3.41 million

Ripley: 7.77 million

Scott: 22.05 million

Stoddard: 13.37 million

Wayne: 3.91 million

*From 2006 through 2012

Source: Federal Drug Enforcement Administration