The tragedy of the opioid epidemic provides a textbook example of what happens when a country allows unfettered access to 76 billion legally prescribed narcotic pain pills over seven years. The drugs in question are Oxycodone and Hydrocodone.
To put this tragedy into a local context, let’s focus on how Utah fits into this picture. Of the aforementioned 76 billion pills, Utah received 696,125,020. Not surprisingly, the four largest counties along the Wasatch Front received the largest number of pills. In fact, one Salt Lake pharmacy dispensed more than 6.3 million pills. That’s slightly under 1 million pills per year over the seven-year period.