(Editorial - Graphic Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

West Virginia’s deadly substance abuse epidemic has become significantly less so lately. According to the National Center for Health Statistics through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a 43.5% decrease in overdose deaths in the state over the past year.

“That’s great news and it’s really unprecedented,” Dr. Matthew Christiansen, chief medical officer for Valley Health and a former state public health officer, told WV MetroNews.

It is wonderful news, yes, but it begs the questions: What has changed? And are use rates as high as they ever were?

It is important to remember, the years following the arrival of COVID-19 saw a significant increase in overdose deaths here.

” … Although drug overdose deaths have declined significantly in the last year or so, they remain higher than in 2020,” Erin DeLullo, host of The Poisoning podcast and newsletter, told MetroNews. “This is to say that while there is room to celebrate, this should still be considered a crisis (just as it was considered in 2020).”

DeLullo said there could be many reasons for the reduction in deaths, but her belief is that the availability of naloxone has made a huge difference.

Success at improving outcomes, then, but not so much in attacking the root of the problem — given the data we have available now.

“Now’s not the time to take our foot off the pedal,” said U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., last week. For her, the solutions lie in proper funding of treatment, transitional housing units, job training and stopping fentanyl before it makes it across the border.

“At the same time, we need to fund drug courts, we need to fund treatment, we need to fund accessibility, we need to fund the mental health that goes along with it,” Capito said then, according to MetroNews.

Capito’s focus on the mental health aspect of this crisis is important. Access to better care is essential. So, too, is the belief that there is hope in our communities — hope for jobs; good education; affordable, accessible, quality health care; affordable housing … a decent quality of life.

“We’ve had a historic crisis with regards to addiction, overdoses and overdose death, and we’re finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel,” Christiansen told MetroNews.

Not quite.

Let us celebrate this success — briefly — and then get back to the business of treating the symptoms AND alleviating the cause of this plague under which we are very much still suffering here, in the present tense.

THEN we can be confident we are walking toward brighter days ahead.