Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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October 28, 2011

Leaders seek drug solutions- Regional meeting addresses growing problem across W.Va.

By GREG JORDAN Bluefield Daily Telegraph

PRINCETON — Leaders from an eleven-county region converged Thursday on Mercer County to share ideas and possible solutions for a drug problem that has helped give West Virginia the most prescription drug overdose deaths per capita in the nation.

A Regional Substance Abuse Task Force with representatives from Mercer, McDowell, Monroe, and seven other counties met at the Mercer County Technical Education Center for the second of six regional meetings scheduled across the state. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued an executive order Oct. 6 that created task force regions to bring community leaders together to share ideas, make recommendations and implement customized plans to address drug abuse in their areas and across the state. Approximately 70 people, most of them from Mercer County, attended the regional meeting.

Dr. Michael J. Lewis, cabinet secretary for the Department of Health and Human Resources, visited Mercer County to hear ideas for preventing drug abuse, treating it, and helping substance abusers recover.

“We want information. We want to hear what their concerns area, what their ideas are,” Lewis said. “ What we want to do is bring this information together. Then it comes to the advisory council, and from that, try to come up with a program that will help us over the months and years of this project. This problem never completely goes away.”

Besides law enforcement efforts, the state also needs to help people get treatment for drug addiction and work on preventing them from becoming addicted, he said. One idea is to limit the access to prescription pain medications such as oxycodone.

“Small numbers of physicians are writing far too many prescriptions for narcotics,” Lewis said.

“That’s something that needs to be changed very quickly. The state medical association is now on board with this.”

Abuse of these prescriptions is one of the factors that makes West Virginia number one in the nation, per capita, for prescription drug deaths.

“Most of these people are very young,” Lewis said.

Another idea is to provide programs that help incarcerated addicts once they leave prison, he said.

“If we are going to be successful, we have to have programs they can continue to participate in,” he said.

The task forces review each others work and share ideas. One local idea that can be part of the solutions is the Mercer County Drug Court, which works to help addicts beat their addictions and resume their lives without drugs.

Once the information has been compiled, it will be used to help draft a strategic plan that would help guide legislation, he said.

A web site that will share this information with the public, governorssubstanceabusetaskforceswv.com is now under construction.

The project’s current timeline calls for developing a project report for a statewide plan by June 2012.

—Contact Greg Jordan at

gjordan@bdtonline.com

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