Caitlin Sussman grew disillusioned after years of failed attempts to help lawmakers understand what people working in the recovery field needed to save lives. She ultimately left her job at Milan Puskar Health Right in Morgantown.
For seven years, she helped prevent the spread of diseases like HIV and hepatitis C by providing people who inject drugs with clean syringes.
In 2021, lawmakers placed requirements on those programs that either shut them down or reduced the number of participants.
Research shows syringe exchange programs are associated with less disease. They also build relationships with social workers that can result in patients getting addiction treatment.
People with drug problems, their loved ones, researchers and health care providers have repeatedly told West Virginia lawmakers what the state needed to do to prevent overdoses. Now, lawmakers on a new committee, the Senate Select Committee on Substance Use Disorder and Mental Health, chaired by Sen. Brian Helton, R- Fayette, are proposing a resolution calling for a year-long study.
Elected in November, Helton has only been at the Capitol to witness recent advocacy. He wants to see a review of why the crisis continues and reasons why people aren’t getting the help they need.
“What reason do we have to believe that if you make a resolution that it’s going to get better?” Sussman said.
The number of overdose deaths in West Virginia shot from about 500 in 2010 to about 850 in 2019. Between 2020 and 2023, during the height of the pandemic, the number of deaths rose and stayed between 1,300 and 1450.
Early this year, health officials announced a dip in deaths during 2024, but state estimates still suggest around 1,000 West Virginians died. Both former State Health Officer Dr. Matthew Christiansen, and current head of the Office of Drug Control Policy, Dr. Stephen Loyd, said they lack enough evidence to point to the reasons for the dip.
For years, state politicians talked regularly about the need to address the crisis.
In 2017, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said officials couldn’t arrest their way out of the problem.
“You can’t treat your way out of it,” she said. “You can’t prevent your way out of it or educate your way out of it. You need all of that.”
Health officials agreed they needed more funding.
“We know where the resources are needed,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, a former state health official.
In 2019, then-Sen. Joe Manchin criticized the drug war.
“We had three decades,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
Each made statements saying that West Virginia needed a “continuum of care” that makes help for people available and affordable at any point.
Experts have called for more treatment providers, recovery homes, crisis call lines, quick response teams of social workers who offer a person help after they’ve overdosed and access to clean syringes. They’ve also said focusing on penalties worsened the problem.
Read more about lawmakers’ continued focus on stricter penalties.
Drugs have decimated communities across the state. Lawmakers are trying to imprison their way out of it.
Betty Hunter was 12 years old when her mother introduced her to painkillers. By her 30s, her drug problem had turned into a full-blown addiction. When the pill mills shut down, she switched to heroin, then finally to fentanyl, the powerful opioid that has supercharged West Virginia’s overdose crisis. “Fentanyl is a whole other game,…
But many of those recommended services are still unavailable, and legislators continue to propose punitive responses.
Years of calls for help
As health care costs increased, lawmakers passed tax cuts and budgets with no increase in spending for about 20 years. During public events, Gov. Patrick Morrisey has doubled down on tax cuts, and his office didn’t answer emailed questions about cutting taxes while gaps in services remain.
As a social worker who’s spent countless hours trying to share her expertise with lawmakers, Sussman doesn’t have much faith in many of them.
In 2021, she told needle exchange program participants that because of the new law, they had to bring all syringes back and provide IDs. Sussman felt she was contributing to the shame people who use drugs may feel. Some participants who are homeless lose those items when officials, rousting homeless camps, throw their belongings away.
While health officials provide funding for many programs, recovery residences and volunteers who find people help with housing and jobs when they are released from jail are among those who’ve said they need more assistance. And according to the Department of Human Services, 18 counties lack quick response teams.
Decades in, challenges remain
Giving an example of why more study is needed, Helton pointed to substance use disorder and homelessness, which may be connected, as an example of a continued problem.
As for syringe exchanges, he said his committee hadn’t addressed those, although a bill to place further restrictions is now being considered in the House. There are just ten exchanges in the state and three of those could close if the bill passes according to the Legislature’s website.
Helton referenced two bills he sponsored as examples of the committee’s focus. One bill requires inpatient addiction programs to ensure patients move to recovery residences. The committee also passed another bill to ensure treatment programs provide patients with medical care. Some lawmakers also want to see the end of methadone programs, which are better for some patients.
“We want for the whole person to be cared for, not just the substance use disorder, not just the mental trauma,” Helton said.
As the committee moves forward with bills creating more requirements for treatment providers, there is still a lack of those providers.
Helton said, “There are no restrictions for people in the private marketplace being able to open more treatment centers right now.”
“Obviously, we can’t print money.”
Christiansen, who previously led the Office of Drug Control Policy, noted that officials have studied the addiction epidemic. But like Helton, he mentioned homelessness continues, and he sees room for review.
“I certainly wouldn’t advocate for reinventing the wheel around the basic science of what works in addiction,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that we know work really well that we’re not currently implementing in West Virginia.”
Amber Blankenship, who is in recovery and works with the REACH Initiative, a nonprofit group which helps people leaving jails, noted that there isn’t enough housing for them, including spots at recovery residences.
“Individuals are being released by the thousands into our communities and with very little support,” she said.
Helton said lawmakers will take feedback.
But according to Blankenship, the grassroots group’s volunteers are becoming burnt-out.
Sussman predicts study conclusions will say what lawmakers want to hear.
She’s watched hundreds of people testify in the Capitol chambers, but lawmakers didn’t even attend the hearings.
Advocates have made some changes, but it’s often working to defeat harmful bills.
They’ve tried sharing testimonies, talking with individual lawmakers and presenting data.
“It doesn’t seem like that holds a lot of weight at the Legislature,” Sussman said. “When you talk about evidence-based practices, they stop listening.”