The Intelligencer
With National Overdose Awareness Day on Saturday, Aug. 31, it’s fitting that West Virginia lawmakers this week learned more about the problem and it’s impact on our state. For well more than a decade, West Virginia has suffered under the weight of a substance abuse epidemic that is crippling individuals, families and whole communities. We have tried to fight it, yet the reality is we are as much in the grip of the monster as ever.
With National Overdose Awareness Day on Saturday, Aug. 31, it’s fitting that West Virginia lawmakers this week learned more about the problem and it’s impact on our state. For well more than a decade, West Virginia has suffered under the weight of a substance abuse epidemic that is crippling individuals, families and whole communities. We have tried to fight it, yet the reality is we are as much in the grip of the monster as ever.
“The bottom-line thing is we have not made enough progress on this crisis,” said Jeremiah Samples, a senior adviser to the Joint Committee on Government and Finance. “We are nowhere near where we need to be, and our data relative to other states and even our own expectations has fallen far short. We need to reassess all of our … strategies and expenditures through the prism of what is impacting real people. …”
He was reporting to the Joint Standing Committee on Health.
The Mountain State has led the nation in overdose deaths since 2010. In 2022 the overdose death rate was a stunning 80.9 per 100,000 people –two and one-half times the national average.
Samples put it mildly when he said “We can’t sustain that as a society. It is crippling to the state.”
Read more: https://www.theintelligencer.net/opinion/editorials/2024/08/substance-abuse-impacting-west-virginia/
