Drug wholesalers has shipped around 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in last six years. This was a period when 1,728 people had overdosed fatally on these two painkillers.

This has amounted  to 433 of the frequently abused opioid pills for every man, woman and child in the state of 1.84 million people.

Four of these counties, Wyoming, McDowell, Boone and Mingo has led the nation in fatal overdoses caused by pain pills, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The records, which showed that the leading drug wholesalers had fought in court to keep secret, had shipped ever-higher doses of the pills . a telltale sign of growing addictions. The death toll had climbed very high.

 Don Perdue, D-Wayne, former Delegate, a retired pharmacist who finished his term earlier this month said "These numbers will shake even the most cynical observer. Distributors have fed their greed on human frailties and to criminal effect. There is no excuse and should be no forgiveness."

McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen Drug Co. together control more than 85 percent of the U.S. drug distribution market by revenue and they have provided more pills to West Virginia than other wholesalers.

As hydrocodone and oxycodone overdose deaths had increased 67 percent in West Virginia between 2007 and 2012, their chief executives had been paid millions and their companies made billions. McKesson then had become America's fifth-largest corporation, with the nation's highest-paid CEO in 2012.

By Prakriti Neogi