An editorial from the Parkersburg News and Sentinel
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — National media outlets have turned their attention to analyzing West Virginia’s woes on a number of fronts. There are magazines investigating the C8 story, and applying it to a larger story about the quality of public water supplies in the Mountain State. There are television shows dissecting our obesity and type 2 diabetes problems. And there are esteemed business and economics publications taking a look at how our economic concerns have fueled our biggest plague: opioid abuse.
All that attention may be a good thing, if it helps us solve the problems we face. But in many ways, the conclusions of these articles amount to “tell us something we don’t know” bullet points. One example comes from Business Insider, in an item headlined “Here’s why the opioid epidemic is so bad in West Virginia – the state with the highest overdose rate in the US.”
In what starts out as an explanation of the explosion of opioid prescriptions across the country in the 1990s, and analysis of the pharmaceutical industry’s encouragement to doctors to make pain the “fifth vital sign,” the article turns to what makes the Mountain State so much more vulnerable:
“1. A disproportionate number of jobs involving manual labor like coal mining, timbering, and manufacturing; and
2. High rates of joblessness.”
Being Business Insider, the publication left out cultural and educational factors that, combined with the rest, made West Virginia such an easy target for opioid peddlers – legal and illegal. But all that national airing of the Mountain State’s dirty laundry can be discouraging and frustrating. What can one person do?
Well, today, you can vote. You can support candidates who have the best interests of West Virginia at heart and who understand that, while there are good things in our past, “the way it has always been done” is not going to cut it, anymore.
You can vote for candidates who do not believe special interests are more important than constituents, who are not afraid of change, who work hard, and who are willing to make difficult decisions. Today is the first of two chances you will have this year – though for judicial races and some others, this is your one shot. Go make the difference.
Related links for this editorial:
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-states-prescribing-the-most-opioid-painkillers-2016-3 )
http://www.recoverybrands.com/
http://www.recoverybrands.com/inside-the-orange-bottle/
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