MARTINSBURG — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Congress is planning smarter when handing out federal opioid addiction treatment dollars.
“We found out that states started to run into addiction problems, but they had no treatment facilities,” Capito said. “We’re looking at more money. We’ve put more a lot of money into that through the White House drug control policy with our High Intensity Drug Task Forces,”Capito said during her visit to the Eastern Panhandle Friday.
Under the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, Congress authorizes more than $181 million each year to fight opioid abuse, funding local opioid prevention and treatment programs.
Capito said Congress has also pushed the federal Heath and Human Services to earmark more funding based on states’ opioid mortality rate instead of its population.
For instance, West Virginia’s opioid overdose mortality rate ranks near the top in overdose deaths per population.
“We’ve learned not to formula fund this money out every place in the state,” Capito said. “We can’t target it to say a West Virginia or a New Hampshire, a Maine, because our population numbers are not going to drive the formula high enough to be able to make it effective.”
West Virginia has seen its share of funding climb based on the state’s higher opioid death mortality rate than states with similar size populations.
“We were successful with that, to target at the higher mortality rate per population,” Capito said.
At the local level, Capito said community education drug programs should be more encompassing and start school age prevention learning earlier.
“You have to start young,” Capito said. “They hear and see on the internet. They hear it in the music and in the movies; they probably hear it at home. They need to hear it from somebody this is not hip, great stuff. This is life-changing, damaging, lethal, bad. This is something that we can all do.
“You think of all the kids that have been affected by this,” Capito said. “How is it going to affect them in terms of their future behavior. And the ones who are affected, need to know now that this is a real problem.”
As an existing program example, Capito pointed to the Boys and Girls Clubs.
“It has to be grassroots,” Capito said. “You can’t do it from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, it has to be at the local level.”