Fayetteville Observer reporter John Ramsey’s five-day series on prescription painkillers set out to explain why and how a national problem is intensified in Fayetteville, N.C., home to the world’s largest Army installation and a large VA Medical Center. Ramsey found that prescription painkillers contributed to 95 deaths in Cumberland County between 2008 and 2011, more than the previous eight years combined. At the Fayetteville VA Medical Center, prescriptions for the painkiller hydrocodone spiked by 4,100 percent from 2000 to 2011. The total number of prescriptions for the powerful painkiller oxycodone rose 272 percent in the Fayetteville region. Along with the surge in prescriptions came a new wave of addiction, crime and overdose deaths.
