MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Biden administration Drug Czar and former state Health Officer Dr. Rahul Gupta is back in West Virginia to talk about the ongoing battle against substance abuse.
Gupta was in Morgantown Thursday. He has other stops scheduled in the Charleston and Lewisburg areas on Friday.
At a roundtable discussion on the WVU campus, Gupta told the group that the Biden administration has allocated $15 billion for addiction treatment to the state, or about $8,500 per West Virginia resident. Gupta said enforcement is still a focus but as the numbers of those addicted rise more options must be considered.
“This major shift in policy will be one where we meet people where they are because we cannot feed dead people,” Gupta said.
Those under 25 likely know someone who has either been addicted or has overdosed, according to Gupta. As the age has dropped, most of the drug market is on the internet, where people inadvertently buy something they think is familiar but the substance could be a deadly cocktail.
One of the most important efforts has been educating younger people about the dangers of fentanyl and synthetic drugs like Xylazine. Xylazine is an animal tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl that can cause severe limb damage when injected.
“Today, a teenager somewhere in America or right here in Morgantown can log on to social media on an app and order what they think is an Adderall or a Xanax and end up killing themselves,” Gupta said. “The rate of that is worse than playing Russian roulette with your life.”
Reducing and eliminating stigma relating to mental health and drug treatment is an objective of the program. The stigma related to drug issues is often attributed to a lack of willpower, poor choices, and low moral character. Gupta said over time, opinions have changed and will continue to change, resulting in more people seeking treatment. He also said fentanyl test strips should be readily available for people to test before they use a substance.
“Naloxone is as enabling for addiction as defibrillators cause heart attacks. So we know that from science, and now everybody has embraced it.”
As interdiction, enforcement and treatment continue, large quantities of these dangerous drugs continue to flow across the border with Mexico. Gupta said the Biden administration is making investments in non-human assets that include non-intrusive detection devices to monitor the border.
“We’re always chasing like whack-a-mole, and that’s the reason why on April 12 I declared Xylazine an emerging threat, for the first time any administration has done that,” Dr. Gupta said.
Many times, successful drug treatment depends on the person’s complete engagement. In many cases, he said, engagement could take more than the standard 28 treatment programs paid for by insurance plans. Following that, he said outreach and outpatient services need to be available to people in recovery.
“The challenge really is connection, community, and family,” Gupta said. “There are going to be individuals who need patient care and who need patient care for a longer time than 30 days.”
The panel included the Chancellor & Executive Dean for Health Sciences, Dr. Clay Marsh; Dean of the WVU College of Applied Human Sciences, Autumn Tooms Cypres; Senior Policy Advisor for U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Audrey Smith; United States Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of West Virginia, Michael J. Aloi; Monongalia County Delegate from the 81st District, Anitra Hamilton; co-chair of the Mountaineer Fentanyl Education Task Force, Azeem Khan; United States Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, Bill Ihlenfeld; Director of the Carruth Center, T. Anne Hawkins; Executive Director at Clarksburg Mission, Lou Otenzio; Dean of the West Virginia University College of Law, Amelia Smith Rinehart and Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, Matthew Cowden.
Stops scheduled for Friday include West Virginia Health Right in Charleston, Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston and the West Virginia School for Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg.