Goodwin, Manchin to hold summit on drug epidemic

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — U.S Sen. Joe Manchin and U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin will hold an open house meeting Tuesday night on solving the growing drug epidemic in West Virginia.

The meeting will be held at the WVU Parkersburg Student Activities Center. The problem is one that both agree desperately needs attention, with overdoses occurring in the Mountain State on a regular basis. Goodwin said that what started out as a pill problem in Southern West Virginia has caused addicts to turn to the needle.

“It started out as a prescription drug problem, and unfortunately it has morphed into a heroin problem in many parts of my district,” Goodwin said.

Manchin thought it was important to figure out why prescription pain medication is so heavily prescribed.

“We have to find out why the doctors are prescribing painkillers like they’re M&M’s,” he said. “You can go (to the dentist) for a toothache and they’ll give you oxycontin. And these opiates are very addictive.”

Goodwin said that one of the best things that people can do is to get rid of any drugs that they don’t absolutely need.

“One of the critical things people can do is get prescription drugs out of their medicine cabinets,” Goodwin said. “If they don’t need them anymore, get them out of the cabinet so they can’t be diverted.”

He said that the drug epidemic has affected so many people in West Virginia either directly or indirectly, and action has to be taken because “quite frankly, people are dying.” Manchin didn’t think the problem was limited to only West Virginia.

“It’s the number one challenge that we have throughout America. It’s the number one challenge that we have in our economy,” Manchin said. “It’s robbing this country of the vitality and the economic prosperity that we should have.”

The summit begins at 5:30 p.m Tuesday night and is open to the public. The Chamber of Commerce of the Mid-Ohio Valley is sponsoring the event.





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