Drug addiction is a treatable disease. We must scale up treatment services in West Virginia to meet the scale of the crisis – and also make sure that people have the support to create a new future of sober living and productive contribution to society.

West Virginia leads the nation in drug overdose death rates. The addiction crisis has destroyed families, overloaded our foster care system, and weakened our workforce. And even though some of our communities have been struggling with the scourge of addiction for decades, we have yet to treat this crisis with the seriousness it deserves.

I support:

• Passing the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act which would treat the addiction crisis like the public health emergency that it is and make a ten-year federal commitment to funding treatment beds and programs, harm reduction programs, and prevention services. The CARE Act would allocate billions of dollars in federal resources to states like West Virginia that are suffering the most.
• Securing and growing federal funding for our public schools in West Virginia, particularly to provide support services like mental health counseling, as our children struggle with the burden of the addiction epidemic
• Funding and supporting locally-based, peer-to-peer recovery efforts that provide community and long-term support for sober living.
• Focusing on proven prevention models. Iceland has succeeded in reducing teen substance abuse by over 80% in the last twenty years. Their strategy focused on providing after school activities, summer programs and educational enrichment for youth. In West Virginia, we have the highest percentage in the country of young people ages 16-24 who are neither working nor in school. We must do more to provide educational opportunities, workforce development and job opportunities for youth.
• Addressing the economic insecurity and hopelessness facing far too many West Virginians by lifting families out of poverty – see “Fighting for working families”