Solutions to the Opioid Epidemic, According to its Witnesses
Morgantown residents who grew up at the epicenter of the opioid crisis give their opinions on its causes and possible solutions.
Mingo Central High School’s 9th grade homeroom fell silent. Zachary White, a freshman at the time, turned in his chair along with the rest of the class to watch as an enraged teacher confiscated a bag of small white pills from his classmate.
White’s 14-year-old classmate had attempted to sell over-the-counter stomach pills as Oxycodone to other freshman as a way to make some fast cash. To his disappointment, he never made a dime — all of his perspective customers already knew what real oxy looked like.
This wasn’t the first time White had heard about opioids selling around school, and it wouldn’t be long before he was approached about buying as well. According to White, the market was thriving in Mingo County.
“Everybody knows somebody that’s on drugs down there,” said White, now a 23-year-old college graduate living in Morgantown, W. Va. “Whether it’s your cousin, your uncle, your neighbor, everybody.”
West Virginia consistently ranks number one in both state opioid-involved overdose death rates and opioid prescribing levels, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse — with about 81 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons and about 50 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017.
Faced with these staggering numbers, many West Virginians are asking how this issue got so far, and what can be done at this point to tame the beast that is the opioid epidemic.
According to population health expert Lauri Andress, the struggle lies within a lack of opportunity. “People have fewer options. Their options are to either leave the state for opportunities, or to stay in a place where there is a strong sense of hopelessness and abandon,” she said.
Southern West Virginia natives who have witnessed the epidemic firsthand, and have since moved North, also have their own answers.
Law student Bobby Chambers, 24, grew up in Oceana, W. Va.
“The culture is very churchy, very god driven, and at the same time chaotic because everyone is addicted to something,” Chambers said.
Chambers left his hometown in Wyoming county for Morgantown directly after high school to pursue higher education opportunities. Although he received above average grades and a full ride to West Virginia University, Chambers didn’t have a perfect upbringing, often moving throughout the foster care system as his parents battled drug addictions.
Chambers is no stranger to drug culture, as his parents both sold and abused drugs. On why anyone would get involved in selling drugs, Chambers says there are two types of people:
“People start selling to make money because they can’t make ends meet. There’s also people that are so drug addicted that they’ve let their life fall apart and selling is the only way to get it back together, but simultaneously it’s really hard for them because they are addicted to what they’re selling.”
Yet Chambers isn’t the only Southern West Virginian to notice a trend. White says in Williamson, resorting to selling drugs as a way to make ends meet is far from rare.
“The neighbors that lived above me sold and the neighbors that lived below me sold,” said White. “They collected S.S.I.* checks and lived off of the government. They were so dependent on the government that they just had to [sell].”
For many, collecting pills came much easier than collecting checks, as White recalls several pharmacies in his hometown shutting down because “they were just giving out pills… Pills for depression, pills for anxiety, pills for just about anything you could think of.”
While a spotlight is shining on pharmaceutical companies and their part in contributing to the epidemic, addiction still reins king in many areas of Southern West Virginia. With major crackdowns on Big Pharma, access to opioids like Oxycodone is getting tighter. But White says restricting prescriptions may not be enough.
“My mom was on some depression pills and our neighbor called us and asked if he could buy those pills from her,” said White. “I think people are going to find a way to get them no matter what. I think if there were more opportunities for the people in southern West Virginia, the opioid epidemic would kind of fizzle out eventually because you’d get people actually wanting to work and wanting to do better for themselves.”
Giving her perspective on the state’s continued struggle, Andress cited “the lack of economic growth in the state, the lack of jobs, the inability to sustain a family at a living wage, gainful employment decreases, and a weakened sense of hope” as the main issues plaguing the state.
Andress says the best way to reach a true solution is to take a deeper look at the causes of the epidemic.
“It is simply not enough to apply a band-aid to fix people who are broken by the opioid crisis and then to send them back to places where there are no opportunities to be contributing members of society.
“You can apply the band-aid because we’re in the middle of a crisis, but you’ve really got to look at the long term issues that caused the crisis.” said Andress, a public health professor at West Virginia University. “If you don’t address both of them, you’re not improving the structural policy and systemic issues that led to the opioid crisis in the first place.”
This perspective is supported by Morgantown resident Vicki Edwards, who left her hometown of Huntington, W. Va. for better living and employment prospects.
“If I had lived up here whenever I was younger I feel like I’d have a lot more going on in life,” said Edwards. “I would’ve had a lot more opportunities, like access to education, access to jobs that pay well enough, access to affordable housing.”
Edwards took advantage of her first opportunity to leave home several years ago, moving in with a friend who had planned to live in Morgantown and was in need of a roommate.
“I got the chance to move up here… I know people down there who don’t have the same way to get out, so they’ve turned to drugs because it’s what they do have,” said Edwards.
This wasn’t the first time Edwards felt grateful to her friends, as she credits them for keeping her away from drugs that were hard to avoid in Huntington.
“A lot of people I know who [sold drugs] did it because they didn’t really have anything else. Whenever I was down and out, I had friends I could go stay with,” she said. “It made me really upset that [selling] was the main thing other people had to do to take care of themselves. I was lucky enough to have a support system… If I didn’t have that place to stay or food to eat due to my friends, I probably would’ve had to too.”
So how can the state move forward? Andress says the answer lies in the economy.
“I think a lot of it has to do with economic development, changing opportunities for employment and bringing in different kinds of industries and making different kinds of decisions on those industries in the state. A lot of that is tied to who’s in office, who’s making decisions about what incentives to give employers to locate themselves in West Virginia.”
As for those who have lived in the areas best known for their opioid problems, a solution to the opioid epidemic lies more in reforming how addiction is dealt with in West Virginia.
On what can be done at this point to heal the damage opioids have caused in the state, White suggests the government “help those addicted by sending them to rehab if they need to and helping them get clean” as opposed to criminalization.
“They can still get drugs in the prison,” said White. “Sending someone to prison doesn’t often change them. I don’t think that’s a crime that should be punished for years, they should just have court-mandated rehab rather than sit in a jail cell.”
Edwards suggests a similar strategy, as she said, “opioids are so bad because it’s being punished as a crime instead of being treated as a sickness… a lot of it needs to be reformed when it comes to treating it as an illness instead of as a choice.”
But there’s still a long road ahead, as many don’t feel hopeful for the future of the state. Chambers says it’s difficult to fight against those at the top of social policy decision-making:
“There are times I’ve debated with myself, like I should really go home and make a difference, I should be that positive change that needs to happen. But other times I’m like, it’s not really worth it to fight the system, nothing’s really going to happen anyway,” he said.
For Edwards, it’s also hard to see the the light at the end of the tunnel.
“It’s a tragedy, the fact that people in charge want to make [overdoses] this big news sensation. ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ but they’ve done nothing to help. They’ve criminalized these people and made them look evil instead of giving them the help that they need.”
*S.S.I. = Supplementary Security Income
