BLUEFIELD — Learning about a new medication that helps victims of opioid drug overdoses to survive and have a second chance at life was on a senator’s agenda Tuesday when she visited Mercer County.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. started her day in Mercer County with a visit to a Naloxone training session at the Bluefield Rescue Squad. Naloxone is a medication used to help save victims of opioid drug overdoses. Capito recently introduced the Co-prescribing Save Lives Act, which encourages physicians to co-prescribe a lifesaving drug along with opioid prescriptions. The bill has passed the U.S. Senate and is now headed to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Naloxone is being provided to rescue squads, fire departments and other first responders. Mercer, McDowell and Wyoming counties are among the counties hardest hit by the opioid drug epidemic, Capito said.
The drug epidemic Mercer County and its communities are seeing is not isolated to any specific group of people.
“I don’t believe there is anybody that the drug problem has not touched,” Mayor Tom Cole said. Many young people are falling victim to drug abuse and its risks.
“I fear we’re going to lose a whole generation to this.” Many addicts are in the 21 to 34 age range, a time when most people are striking out on their own to start careers and families, she added.
Heroin use is part of this epidemic. Capito said it has been estimated that 80 percent of addicts who use heroin started their habit with opioid medications. Opioid addiction cuts across every state and every socioeconomic group. County Commissioner Greg Puckett said former U.S. Attorney Boothe Goodwin helped acquire a $100,000 grant to help educate the public about Naloxone and learn how to use it properly.
Delegate John Shott, R-Mercer, pointed out that West Virginia’s new Samaritan Law protects first responders from liability when, in good faith, they use Naloxone to help a patient.
Capito recalled cases in which patients saved from a drug overdose abruptly leave hospitals without seeking help to escape their addictions. She said one bill she is supporting would help bring overdose victims into contact with health care professionals who could help them combat their addiction.
To help the Bluefield Rescue Squad and the Princeton Rescue Squad, a company called Kaleo has donated $200,000 worth of Evzio, an auto-injector version of Naloxone, Erica Bartlett, program coordinator of Project Renew, said.