Pharmaceutical executives mocked their customers as hillbillies, disparaging them in rhymes even as the companies poured pills into Appalachia and opioid addiction rates and overdoses rose. One email told of Jed, for example, "a poor mountaineer" who "barely kept his habit fed." Another rhyme referred to Kentucky as "OxyContinville." An email showed a box of breakfast cereal with "smack" placed under the words "OxyContin for kids." A lawyer for one West Virginia county said the mocking showed a culture of contempt for the people being sold the pills. The revelations came in the West Virginia trial of pharmaceutical firms charged with illegally flooding the state with opioids, the Guardian reports. The national distribution companies on trial are AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, per the Huntington Herald-Dispatch.
Chris Zimmerman of AmerisourceBergen wrote one of the emails after Florida moved against pill mills in 2011. "Watch out Georgia and Alabama," he told colleagues, "there will be a max exodus of Pillbillies heading north." It was Zimmerman's job to make sure the company stopped delivering opioids to any pharmacies selling suspiciously large amounts of the drugs. He testified that he regretted the email but described it as "a reflection of the environment at the time," per the Guardian. The county lawyer called it "a pattern of conduct by those people charged with protecting our community." Zimmerman was accused in court of not following company policy by halting deliveries during investigations and not reporting suspicions to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "We’re a company, we're not an enforcement agency," Zimmerman answered, "and we're not a regulatory agency." (More opioids stories.)
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