David Robinson, Chad Arnold and Frank Esposito are reporting for LoHud [dot] com on the flood of opioid pain pills that flooded New York during a seven-year stretch and led to the ongoing epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths. According to data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the wave of prescription painkillers hit communities hard in the Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier. Greene County received an average of 40.1 pills per person per year, which put it among the top 10 counties statewide from 2006 to 2012. During that same period, Ulster County received 34 pills per person and Columbia had 31.6 pills per person. Niagara and Sullivan counties had the highest averages, at about 51 and 50 pills per person, respectively, the data showed. The pills were widely distributed despite being monitored by authorities and others legally required to track prescription drugs. "The whole thing is shocking; every aspect of it is shocking," said John Coppola, the executive director of the state's Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Providers. Coppola said the number of pills in each community combined with the various channels necessary to obtain them points to a larger problem. "You fundamentally have to come to the conclusion that this is not about bad people who are sneaking out in the woods and stuffing a bunch of meds in their mouth. This is about people who were prescribed into addiction, prescribed into overdose," Coppola said. Some of the highest concentrations of pills hit large swaths of the Midwest and Appalachia, where many counties received between 100 and 200 pills per person per year, according to The Washington Post. Read the full story at LoHud [dot] com.