In 1997, the Roanoke-based medical examiner counted one OxyContin death in southwest Virginia, the next year three, and the year after that sixteen. But those numbers were inexplicably unexposed until 2001, five years after Purdue launched its drug. A Drug Enforcement Administration official told a Richmond reporter that illicit opioids were unlikely to spread beyond the mountains to the state capital, declaring southwest Virginia “a little bit unique,” although he conceded there were other Oxy-abuse hot spots in rural Maine, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Charleston, West Virginia.
