CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch told lawmakers Wednesday it’s time for the state to pivot to a new direction for treatment of drug addicts caught up in the state’s opioid crisis.
West Virginia has the highest per capita death rates in the country from drug overdoses and it is estimated more than 150,000 West Virginians are substance abusers.
Crouch told the Senate Finance Committee that the next step in fighting the addiction crisis is to implement the plan put forth by Gov. Jim Justice during his State of the State Address earlier this month.
The plan, termed “Jim’s Dream,” calls for spending up to $45 million on shorter term drug treatment programs with a major emphasis on job skills training.
“What we are planning to do–and to our knowledge no other state is doing this–is to begin helping individuals plan for discharge from treatment when they go into treatment,” Crouch said.
“An important part in making sure that an individual is successful in their effort to try and make sure they don’t go back to their former lifestyle, and that’s usually unemployed and without hope of employment,” Crouch said. “They need hope, and if they have a job they have hope.”
Justice’s plan calls for taking $20 million from available surplus funds now to buy training equipment and upgrade training centers. “You have to train these people to do something that they can genuinely do,” Justice said earlier this month.
Historically, West Virginia has not had enough treatment beds for addicts. Crouch said the state will have nearly 1,000 beds by the end of the year. However, he cautioned that just putting someone in a treatment facility for a long period of time is not the answer.
“We’ve learned that the long term treatment–six to 12 months–is not the best practice,” Crouch said. “The best practice is 90 to 120 days in a treatment bed, but then move the individual to a recovery bed or even outpatient.”
Crouch expects a failure rate of about 50 percent for individuals who go through the program. However, he said the state has to be committed to continuing to work with the addicts toward recovery.
“We have to do something different,” he said, “and we believe this will be successful.”