From 2006 to 2012, there were 17,901,390 prescription pain pills, enough for 72 pills per person per year supplied to Clark County.

The statistic comes from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, known as ARCOS, which was obtained by The Washington Post through a court order. The Post released their findings last week.

“It’s pretty staggering — almost 18 million prescription pain pills supplied to Clark County from 2006-12,” Jennifer Gulley, director of performance management and accreditation at the Clark County Health Department & Home Health Agency, said in an email to The Sun Monday.

According to the report, AmerisourceBergen Drug distributed 4,928,120 of those pills and Actives Pharma, Inc. manufactured 7,573,500 pills for Clark County.

Walmart Pharmacy in Winchester received the highest number of pills. Other Top 5 pharmacies receiving pills in Clark County include Kroger Pharmacy, CVS, Clark County Pharmacy and Walgreens.

According to The Post’s national data analysis, the “volumes of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012.”

When looking at the map on The Post’s report, “Drilling into the DEA’s pain pill database,” the same goes for Clark County. As the years went on, the number of pills handled by companies in Clark County also increased.

There is no data for after 2012. Although data for 2013 and 2014 does exist, the DEA hasn’t released it to media outlets, according to The Post.

The data only includes information on shipments of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills.

According to The Post, it 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.

According to The Post, it’s important to remember 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 what pharmacies the pills are shipped to and nothing else.