
How to download and use the DEA pain pills database - danso
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2019/07/18/how-download-use-dea-pain-pills-database/
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whiskers1960
As a chronic pain sufferer, opiates are a lifeline. Problem has been
indescriminate use pushed by docs before they became fully aware of the risks.
Now I jump through hoops to get a fairly low dose of hydrocodone 7.5. I have
both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and a host of other
diagnosis. Without effective pain management, life isnt worth living. I'm only
58!

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etaioinshrdlu
What sort of hoops do you have to jump through?

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waltwalther
I cant speak for Whiskers, but my father, who is almost seventy and takes a
similar dose of the same medication, is routinely forced to jump through an
unreasonable amount of hoops just to get a recently-lowered prescription that
barely lasts throughout the month. I say "barely lasts" because his new
prescription always seems to arrive a few days late.

And the doctors could care less. Not only that, but if he complains about his
medicine arriving late or about his dose being constantly lowered or about his
treatment, then he is treated even worse.

The "hoops" I am referring to are: frequent drug tests, frequent
classes/counseling an hours drive away, frequent alternative and experimental
treatments an hours drive away, all the while being blatantly accused of being
a drug-seeking addict.

My father is the most upstanding man I know. He is a Vietnam Veteran with
related injuries who receives his treatment at the VA (which is the most
inefficiently-run place I have ever witnessed. Seriously its a complete
embarrassment. The arrogant doctors who know absolutely nothing about pain
management, and who make no effort to hide that they care less doesnt even
begin to cover whats wrong with that place..but I digress..). My father only
agreed to accept opiates as a last resort. He has never had issues with
alcohol/cigarettes/marijuana or any other drugs. He is an honest, church-
going, hardworking gentleman who doesnt deserve to be humiliated multiple
times per month to just live a nearly pain-free life.

This recent trend to eradicate opiates, while somewhat understandable, is
leaving many good people with a life of constant severe pain.

Sorry for the rant. I got started, and I couldnt stop.

~~~
woah
Does being an upstanding, church-going citizen prevent becoming addicted to
the most addictive drug known?

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waltwalther
Good point, and not at all. This is a charged subject and I guess I was
throwing in some facts to support my statement that he isn't a drug seeker. My
point is that he doesnt deserve to be humiliated every month just to live a
somewhat pain-free life. Something I feel very strongly about, but you are
totally right.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/1MA0P](http://archive.is/1MA0P)

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danso
I'm not sure if WaPo just made their paywall more aggressive, but I can't seem
to read this URL now w/o logging in. They do provide a direct URL from
Cloudflare to the raw data, which is about 7GB compressed and uncompresses to
a single tab-delimited text file with 180M rows at 80GB:

    
    
        https://d2ty8gaf6rmowa.cloudfront.net/dea-pain-pill-database/bulk/arcos_all_washpost.tsv.gz
    

There is also individual state level data with the following format (replace
`il` – i.e. IL for Illinois – with the state postal code of your choice):

    
    
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/dea-pain-pill-database/summary/arcos-il-statewide-itemized.tsv.gz
    

That said, the data is fairly hard to understand without reading the article
so it's likely much more efficient to login to read it and download. Here's a
tweet thread with context from the WaPo's data editor:

[https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1151904218095194112](https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1151904218095194112)

And here's a 10K row random sample to preview in Google Sheets:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19NZtjOEPxNdNfZS9l-yZ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19NZtjOEPxNdNfZS9l-yZzmM5b7KqJkREL06N7nRm_n8/edit?usp=sharing)

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dreamcompiler
I was able to read it by disabling Javascript.

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karing
For 10 years I had Hydrocodone as a treatment for pain. Truth be told it also
helped with my energy levels. I was functioning well. At 60 diagnosed with RA
and a number of other immune disorders. That was at the time of Feds starting
to crack down. I could probably find doctors to prescribe the pills , but
after a pain chest & back sent me to ER , a GI scope showed changes to the
ducts that run to the pancreas. The Anesthetist said pain pills do that ( said
with no judgement & said if you need them then take them ) . But I thought ,
i’d try to get off them. My doctor weaned me down. But my quality day to day
is gone. No energy , pain without relief . Illinois medical cannabis is not my
answer , been trying. Some strains actually increase body awareness therefore
increasing pain. So I’ll probably have to change doctors if mine won’t put me
back on them.

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forgotmypw3
Investigations How to download and use the DEA pain pills database By Steven
Rich , María Sánchez Díez and Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn July 18 This page will
be updated as we address your questions about the data.

The Washington Post published a significant portion of a database that tracks
the path of every opioid pain pill, from manufacturer to pharmacy, in the
United States between 2006 and 2012. We have reported a number of stories
using this data set, but we believe there are more stories to be told.

We are making this data accessible to journalists to download and use in their
reporting to promote a deeper understanding of the regional and local effects
of the opioid crisis. Academics and readers may also download and explore this
data for their own use.

How to download this data Go to the DEA pain pills database page. Enter the
state and county (if applicable) for which you want data.

You can download graphics and/or analyzed data sets for distributors,
manufacturers and pharmacies in the area by clicking “Get chart as image.” If
you would like to do your own analysis, you can download the raw data file by
clicking the bold and underlined link below each chart.

Click here to download the national data from The Washington Post. Note: This
is a very large file, so download times may be long.

If you want to download the full data set released by the Ohio federal court,
click here. This includes information on shipments of other drugs, shipments
between distributors, drugs distributed to mail order pharmacies, refunded
shipments, and more.

Guidelines for using this data

Fill out the form below to establish a connection with our team and report any
issues downloading the data. This will also allow us to update you with any
additional information as it comes out and answer questions you may have.
Because of the volume of requests, we ask you use this channel rather than
emailing our reporters individually.

If you publish an online story, graphic, map or other piece of journalism
based on this data set, please credit The Washington Post, link to the
original source, and send us an email when you’ve hit publish. We want to
learn what you discover and will attempt to link to your work as part of
cataloguing the impact of this project.

Post reporting and graphics can be used on-air. We ask for oral or on-screen
credit to The Washington Post. For specific requests, including interview with
Post journalists, please email postpr@washpost.com.

About this data set

The Post gained access to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of
Reports and Consolidated Orders System, known as ARCOS, as the result of a
court order. The Post and HD Media, which publishes the Charleston Gazette-
Mail in West Virginia, waged a year-long legal battle for access to the
database, which the government and the drug industry had sought to keep
secret. The download contains raw data on shipments of oxycodone and
hydrocodone pills to chain pharmacies, retail pharmacies and practitioners.
You can also download summary data on the largest distributors, manufacturers
and pharmacies in your county and state. The summary is one analysis of the
data. There is much more that can be analyzed and reported.

We have cleaned the data to include only information on shipments of oxycodone
and hydrocodone pills. We did not include data on 10 other opioids because
they were shipped in much lower quantities and were diverted at far lower
rates over the seven years. Diversion refers to when pills do not go directly
to a patient and end up at another source, such as the black market. The Post
also removed shipments that did not wind up in the hands of consumers, such as
shipments from distributors to themselves. The subset of the data is very
similar to how experts working on the federal court case in Ohio analyzed the
data. There are Veterans Affairs Department distribution pharmacies in
Charleston, S.C., and Leavenworth, Kan., that serve the region. The DEA
considers these to be retail pharmacies. However, the pills are much more
likely to be spread in the region than to those counties. This is why the per
capita rate of pills in those counties is far higher.

It’s important to remember that the number of pills in each county does not
necessarily mean those pills went to people who live in that county. The data
only shows us what pharmacies the pills are shipped to and nothing else. The
downloaded files are formatted as .tsv with fields separated with tabs. You
will need software, such as 7Zip, to unzip the file. Once the file is
unzipped, you should open the document using SQL, Python or R. We do not
recommend converting the file into a .csv because there are commas within the
data fields. We also do not recommend using Excel; the program can only open
files in which there are less than a million rows, so the full data set will
be inaccessible.

If you are using a slow or old computer, we recommend that you download the
summary files on the database page. This will give you a smaller data set
geared to whichever fields you are interested in, such as county or state. The
best way to understand the definitions of the columns and variables in this
data set is to refer to the DEA’s ARCOS handbook, which provides detailed
descriptions of the records.

Steven Rich

Steven Rich is the database editor for investigations at The Washington Post.
While at The Post, he has worked on investigations involving the National
Security Agency, police shootings, tax liens and civil forfeiture. He was a
reporter on two teams to win Pulitzer Prizes, for public service in 2014 and
national reporting in 2016. Follow

María Sánchez Díez

María Sánchez Díez is an operations editor in Local. Before joining The
Washington Post, she worked at ProPublica's Electionland project and at
Univision, where she was a general assignment editor focused on digital
storytelling and audience engagement projects aimed to serve the Spanish-
speaking immigrant communities in the US. Follow

Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn

Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn is the community editor at The Washington Post, with
a focus on comments, live chats and reader submissions. She comes to The Post
from Mother Jones, where she was the assistant editor for audience and
breaking news. Follow

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hello_tyler
More people forced into the black market, good job guys. I feel bad for people
who get addicted but also feel personal responsibility and choice should be
paramount. You should be able to decide for yourself.

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cookiecaper
IMO they're working to construct a grey market here. As far as I can tell, the
"opiate crisis" has become a thing because vested interests wanted to build
out a lucrative specialization in "pain management". Florida enacted a law
last year severely restricting the ability of ordinary doctors to prescribe
opiate medications, legally requiring anyone who needs more than a 72 hour
supply to seek it from a separate specialized pain management clinic.

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rubyn00bie
Woah... just woah, so am I mathing this wrong, or from 2006-2012 there were
~250 pain pills per person (man, woman, child) sold in America? Because if so,
I don't know how on earth any executive couldn't be fucking liable for knowing
the vast majority being manufactured and sold were being used illicitly.

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mruts
Doctors prescribed them, so who cares?

I personally think we should just be able to buy any drug we want at a
convenience store, but what do I know?

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JaimeThompson
That would have a negative effect on how useful our modern antibiotics are.

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mruts
You know, that's one of the few valid points against the legalization of all
drugs. I don't care how many die or overdose or whatever (it's a moral issue
of owning one's own body, much like abortion) but antibiotics seem to throw a
wrench into the whole thing. By misusing antibiotics, you are not just
affecting your body, but everyone else's on earth as well.

An interesting problem that I still haven't resolved.

