From Matewan to Martinsburg and from Charleston to Charles Town, as a state we have fallen far short of addressing the root causes of our opioid epidemic and working to restore our broken communities.
The simple fact is that we cannot criminalize our state's drug problems away. The only effects of the last decade of emphasizing the opioid epidemic as a criminal justice issue have been overstressed jails and prisons, broken communities, a state where nearly one out of four children are raised by their grandparents, and no substantial reduction in drug use over the last 14 years. The rate of fatal overdoses has actually INCREASED since 2010.
That is a harsh reflection of an utter failure in addressing this suite of issues.
At some point it needs to be made clear that the emphasis on criminalizing users is not only ineffective, but it is actually exacerbating the problems in our communities that initially led people to seek escape or numbness through opioid and other drug use. The fracturing of our families, the lack of economic opportunity that can afford any sort of meaning or upward mobility, the sense that individuals are being stifled by the decay of our communities. Those issues cause people to turn to drugs for a sense of numbness or escape -- and then we pluck those people from their communities, throw them in jail, give them a permanent criminal record, and accelerate the fracturing of families, the lack of mobility and meaning, and the sense that our community decay is stifling our community members.
That cycle CANNOT be broken through criminalization alone. It can only be repeated.
As noted recently in West Virginia Public Broadcasting:
“The bottom line is that we have not made enough progress on this crisis,” Samples said. “We’re 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 SUD strategies and expenditures through the prism of what is impacting real people in our society.”
A survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that 208,000 people in West Virginia used illicit drugs in the last month.
“That’s an average,” Samples said of the number. “It’s a gut-wrenching number to hear, but that’s where we stand.”
Samples also cited a West Virginia University Match Survey that found 359,880 West Virginians used drugs in the past year.
“We can’t sustain that as a society,” Samples said. “That is, it’s crippling to the state.”
In 2010, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate per 100,000 people was 28.2. Even after the state spent millions combating the problem, in 2022, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate had grown to 80.9 per 100,000 people.
“Our overdose death rate since 2010 has increased by 135 percent,” Samples told the committee. “West Virginia’s overdose death rate is 151 percent higher than the best state in the country, 85.6 percent higher than the national average and 36.4 percent higher than the next worst state (Tennessee).”
What we need is real investment into the communities that are hurting, real programs that can help people recover -- not only in the sense that they are no longer using drugs, but also in the sense that they can rejoin society, get a job without the stigma of their past and with the promise of meaning and upward achievement, and in doing so help others to do and find the same.
When people are at the margins, expansive criminalization of their behavior only drives them further to the margins or puts them directly under state care as an inmate in our overburdened criminal justice system.
Addressing the opioid crisis and other associated drug crises in West Virginia means taking a holistic approach through greater investment in public services and training programs, investment in community spaces and infrastructure that can heal our communities, bring people in from the margins, and ultimately begin to restore our communities both socially and economically.
That's not an exhaustive list of the problems we face or the solutions we need to undertake, but it is a start, and it's more than you'll hear from many other politicians across the state, who seem content to just do more of the same and hope for different outcomes.
It's time for a new direction in our efforts to end the opioid crisis in West Virginia and it's time for new leadership to get us there. And it’s time for us all to join in the fight to secure a 21st century Economic Bill of Rights for ALL West Virginians! (Learn more about the idea, here)
To help get me elected, support our campaign by donating at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/troy-for-98-1 !
To help overhaul the whole state leadership, head over to: https://secure.actblue.com/directory/WV
And thank you!
Troy
Troy N. Miller
Candidate, West Virginia House of Delegates District 98
Read original post: www.troyforwv.com/...
(P.S. I talk a lot about overcriminalization here -- but the people who really need to face criminal justice? The executives who are still getting rich off this crisis. Next essay...)
