WAPO: 76 Billion Opioid Pills Flooded Market from 2006 to 2012
CABRERA: A stunning new report out today from "The Washington Post" unmasking just how easy it is for doctors to prescribe copious amounts of highly addictive pain pills which are fueling the deadly opioid epidemic. Get this, 76 billion in just six years. That's how many opioid pain pills America's largest drug company saturated the market with from 2006 to 2012. Those drugs resulted in 100,000 related deaths during that same time period. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now. Elizabeth, these numbers are astounding. What else was in the report.</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Ana, they really are. And when you put them on a per person scale, they're even more astounding. "The Washington Post" said, if you look at that time period, 2006 through 2012, enough opioids were prescribed that every man, woman and child in this country would have 36 pills a year -- 36 pills per person for everyone in the United States. That's a stunning number. If you look at the growth from 2016 to 2018, 8.4 billion pills to 12.6 billion. That's a 51 percent increase in just those seven years. And there were certain parts of the country that were harder hit. West Virginia had the highest number of pills per person, 66 pills per person. Not surprisingly, also the number of -- the highest number of opioid related deaths.</s>CABRERA: Wow. While I have you, Elizabeth, I also want to ask you about Ebola. Because the World Health Organization just declared an outbreak in the Congo as a public health emergency of international concern. What exactly does that mean?</s>COHEN: What that means is that before it was sort of thought that maybe this would stay in the Congo. It was in the Congo. It was in the more rule areas. But over the weekend, they had a case in Goma. And they're concerned, because that's a particularly large city that has an airport. It's kind of a hub, transportation hub, that makes them worry this could go further than just the Congo.</s>CABRERA: OK, Elizabeth Cohen, we know you'll keep us updated on that. Thank you very much. Still ahead, a fact check on the White House cabinet meeting that you watched on this show yesterday. CNN has identified 13 lies that came out of the President's mouth. We'll debunk those for you when we come back.