Pill blitz: The numbers are staggering: 76 billion pain pills distributed between 2006 and 2012 by the largest drugs companies in the U.S. Enough to supply every child and adult in the country with 36 pills each year. In the hardest hit rural communities, the pill-per-capita count reached into the hundreds. Using data the newspaper obtained by court order after the government and the drug industry fought to keep it secret, The Washington Post has published an incredible report on the massive scale of opioid distribution in the U.S. that grew as overdose deaths skyrocketed. The newspaper has made the county-by-county database public, so local journalists and academics could begin to draw connections between the flood of pills and the toll they took on their communities. One pharmacy in a small town in Virginia alone received 7.7 million pills in that period. “The epidemic was not something out of sight, behind closed doors, under a bridge,” a team of Post reporters write. “In full view, it intensified and the companies, health care professionals, law enforcement officials and government regulators were unable or unwilling to stop it.”