CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Marshall University clinical director urged state lawmakers Tuesday to do what’s necessary to equip school counselors and others to help students as early as possible avoid addiction to opioids.
Lyn O’Connell is the clinical director for Marshall University’s Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment training program, also called MUSBIRT. She was at the capitol as part of monthly interim committee meetings giving lawmakers an update on the opioid epidemic.
O’Connell said MUSBIRT has been working closely with the Cabell County school system and they’ve gotten an idea of how early students start experimenting with prescription drugs and things like heroin.
“We know that if we are waiting to intervene till someone is at high school we have waited far too long,” O’Connell said. “There are points of intervention that can be started as early as kindergarten.”
O’Connell said school counselors MUSBIRT has worked with have expressed they want the training so they can assist students.
“Students are reporting the use of illicit drugs in the school system or have easy access to them,” O’Connell said.
O’Connell also shared the latest statistics with lawmakers concerning the drug problem in West Virginia.
“We’re (West Virginia) the third highest prescribing rate for prescription opioids but it’s only about one pill behind. So it’s 137 pills per hundred persons,” O’Connell said.
Drug-related drug deaths remain high, according to the latest statistics.
“Every 10 hours somebody in West Virginia dies of a drug overdose,” O’Connell said.
O’Connell said numbers compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control are often lagging two or three years behind.