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Addiction: Economic revitalization would help problem

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in the Mountain State last week, courtesy of the American Conservative Union Foundation. Sessions was speaking as part of West Virginia on the Rise: Rebuilding the Economy and Rebuilding Lives, but his focus was the substance abuse epidemic that has choked our region.

Sessions sounded what has become a familiar note for those in government who are getting their minds wrapped around the substance abuse epidemic about five years too late. The trick is stricter law enforcement, he said. But then Sessions conceded, “It’s not part of treatment. It’s a punishment for wrong doing or a mechanism to stop illegal activity.”

To Sessions, a focus on treatment comes too late. Instead, “The best action is not to start. As Nancy Reagan would say, just say no,” he said.

Right. Tell that to the tens of thousands of men and women in the grip of addiction now; many of whom want desperately to turn their lives around.

Yes, turning to drug abuse was a choice for many addicts. For those who got hooked on opioids before the spotlight was turned on the federal government’s aiding and abetting of bad doctors and pharmacists who flooded Appalachia with pills, the choice was not so simple.

And in parts of West Virginia, societal norms and a putrid economy are perhaps the biggest parts of the problem left untackled. Before users become a burden, or destroy themselves and their families, drugs are accepted as just part of life in some parts of West Virginia. Lest you scoff at anyone who would adopt such an attitude toward substance abuse, remember how we all celebrated and applauded the exploitation by Hollywood of our own “Dancing Outlaw” and “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia,” beginning in 1991 and ending in about 2009. The documentation of that family’s struggle with addiction and poverty showed that even way back then, drugs were easy to get by people with almost no money and who thought they had little else to live for in Southern West Virginia; and no one batted an eye.

Sessions is not wrong that stricter law enforcement, and properly equipping law enforcement officers is PART of the solution to this monstrous problem. But what if everyone was giving as much thought to bringing hope through revitalizing our economy and changing the culture that provided such fertile ground in which this plague was able to grow?

Going after a pharmaceutical company, or the federal agency that regulates it; or creating stricter laws — those are relatively easy. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, that we faced the tough stuff.

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