National Drug Prevention Alliance & PPP » Editor’s Notes: Harm reduction effort working

For once, West Virginia’s improvement has been faster than the national average, which was a 44% decrease in opioid overdose deaths for the period. Still, given that the state had by far the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in 2023 at 81.9 per 100,000 deaths (yes, that figure includes more than opioids), one year of improvement still keeps us among the worst of the worst.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, overdose deaths are decreasing most in places where harm reduction practices are at work.

“They’re doing treatment first. They’re lowering barriers to getting help,” Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta told the organization. “The expansion of naloxone distribution at the community level has exploded and is very likely one of the key drivers of why overdose deaths are declining. Medications for opioid use disorder like methadone and buprenorphine cut overdose risk by half.”

Dasgupta is a scientist studying drug overdose deaths at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“If we want overdose deaths to continue to decline in the United States, we need to keep doing the things that we know work,” he said. “There are people alive right now because of these effective, proven strategies for preventing overdoses.”

Use-prevention efforts such as honest school-based awareness programs, prescription drug monitoring programs, improved access to affordable mental healthcare, even data collection efforts that help guide the conversation — it all helps.

For that matter, access to affordable healthcare in general — particularly in a state that relies so much on physical laborers who face the risk of injury and chronic physical pain daily — is essential. Even better if alternative means of pain management are encouraged rather than squashed.

But perhaps one of the least considered when there is so much lower-hanging fruit for politicians are the “deaths of despair,” and the role hopelessness and dismal economic prospects have played in this plague. Deep generational poverty, socio-cultural assumptions about both education/job training AND substance use, and the perpetual failure to bring any momentum to the expansion and diversification of our economy have been crippling.

As the abstract for one Marshall University study on “The opioid epidemic: Effects on recidivism in West Virginia,” put it, “the opioid epidemic was just a by-product of a much larger issue found in West Virginia.”

Now, tens of millions of dollars have been distributed across the state in the early stages of the West Virginia First Foundation’s mission of “Empowering West Virginians to prevent substance use disorder, support recovery, and save lives.”

According to Chairman Greg Duckworth, “These investments are not just funding grants, they are strengthening an ecosystem. We are supporting foster families, peer recovery networks, workforce pipelines, diversion strategies, wraparound youth services, and the long-term capacity needed to change outcomes for generations.”

Here’s hoping the goal is that one day the foundation will run out of money after having completed its mission and happily close up shop.

But until that day, no one can let what looks like success over the course of one year lull them into letting off the gas. We’re not even out of the driveway.

Source: https://www.newsandsentinel.com/opinion/local-columns/2026/03/editors-notes-harm-reduction-effort-working/