April 6, 2023 – Maybe it was because Kirby was so new to the process, or maybe he was just another Republican delegate in a supermajority that leadership could choose to ignore – and did.
Part of what the freshman legislator ran into was a GOP mindset that permeates the Capitol, that leans into rumor, innuendo and tall tales about needle litter and dismisses science. In 2021, the Legislature passed a law that made it dang near impossible – and certainly cost prohibitive – for any entity, including county governments, to set up or continue harm reduction programs. And because there are successful treatments, because there are answers, we are left to believe that they just don’t give a rat’s patootie.
And that, as deaths rates prove, was a terrible and deeply troubling mistake.
The number of overdose deaths in West Virginia in March of 2022 was 1,485. Two years earlier? 900.
In 2016, West Virginia had a drug overdose death rate of 52.0 per 100,000 people. In 2020, 81.4.
This is all moving in the wrong direction.
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