About 100 women in our area may get new leases on life as a result of an announcement last week. It was that Living Free Ohio Valley plans to use a $3 million state grant to open a long-term care facility for women suffering from drug addiction.
As LFOV President Sharon Travis noted, “long-term care is what is missing” from many programs to help substance abusers. “You need long-term oversight to be healed.”
But, demonstrated by the very fact that money for the long-term treatment center is just now being provided, West Virginia simply does not have the resources to win the battle against substance dependence. Last week’s announcement from the state Department of Health and Human Resources was that a total of $21 million is being sent to nine residential treatment facilities throughout the state.
Though $21 million will do a lot of good, it is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Mountain State needs.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., got to the root of the problem during a congressional subcommittee hearing last week. Both she and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., were critical of federal action — or lack of it — regarding the opioid abuse crisis.
Manchin asked some officials testifying at the hearing why the government did not act sooner to curb the flow of opioid painkillers into our state. He pointed out that between 2007-12, more than 780 million hydrocodone pills were shipped into West Virginia.
“There’s no way to explain it … There’s guilty hands all around,” replied former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, now a member of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.
Obviously. But having recognized its failure, why isn’t Washington doing more to help our state?
Clearly, it isn’t, as Capito pointed out. She cited a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration distribution of $485 million to battle drug abuse. As Capito (and we, previously) noted, West Virginia — with the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, by far, received a paltry $6 million.
“Let’s write these grants to where the greatest needs are,” Capito suggested.
Precisely.